Ex-policeman sentenced to 35 years in prison for femicide that shocked Ecuador

An Ecuadorian ex-policeman was sentenced Thursday to 35 years in prison for the murder of his wife last September in the police academy on the outskirts of Quito where he was an instructor, a case that has shocked the Andean country.

“Based on the evidence presented and accepting the request made by the prosecution, the Court of Criminal Guarantees, unanimously, sentenced German C. to an aggravated maximum sentence of 34 years and 8 months in prison as a perpetrator of the crime of feminicide,” the prosecutor said in a statement.

The wife of ex-Lieutenant German Caceres, Maria Belen Bernal, disappeared on September 11 after entering the Higher Police School (ESP), an officer training establishment, to visit her husband.

The body of this 34-year-old lawyer was found ten days later on a hill near the establishment. German Caceres, excluded from the police since September, was arrested in December in Colombia, a neighboring country where he had fled.

The former police officer admitted during the hearing “having attempted the life of his wife and apologized to the family of the victim”, indicated the prosecution.

This affair scandalized the population of the small Andean country, faced with an increase in feminicides.

It cost their posts to the Minister of the Interior at the time, Patricio Carrillo, and to two generals, all three dismissed by President Guillermo Lasso.

The victim’s mother, Elizabeth Otavalo, believes that her daughter was the victim of a “state crime”, because she died in a police institution.

The Ecuadorian president asked “forgiveness because this should never happen, let alone in a public building where those who must protect” the citizens are trained.

The judges also demanded that the police academy present a public apology, that it award a medal bearing the name of Maria Belen Bernal to the best elements of each promotion, and that human rights, in particular the questions gender, are addressed in the first year of training.

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