Swiss court jails Guatemala ex-police for prison murders

GENEVA: Guatemala’s former police chief Erwin Sperisen was slapped with a 15-year prison sentence on Friday after being reconvicted for the deaths of seven inmates in his home country.

Sperisen, who holds dual Swiss and Guatemalan citizenship, had been sentenced to life by a Geneva court in 2014 over his role in the deaths of 10 prisoners. But the Swiss Federal Tribunal set aside the conviction last year, saying the Geneva court relied on faulty evidence and did not give Sperisen’s lawyers sufficient opportunity to confront his accusers.

Prosecutors in the canton of Geneva retried the case this month. The court on Friday found him guilty of complicity in the murders of seven people in Pavon jail in September 2006. He was however cleared in a separate case involving the alleged summary executions of three prisoners who had escaped from El Infiernito jail in 2005.