Lima, Apr 22 (EFE).- The health of former President Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), who will be extradited to Peru in the coming days, is “guaranteed,” said the president of the Judiciary, Javier Arévalo, in statements this Saturday to the press.
The head of the Supreme Court responded in this way to Toledo’s request, in an interview with EFE, so that the justice of his country does not allow his “death in prison.”
Arévalo commented that “Alejandro Toledo’s health is guaranteed, as every detained person has to be checked. There will be no problem ”, after he arrives in Peru.
The highest authority of the judicial system indicated that the corruption process against Toledo “is a case of a criminal process that the judges know how to handle,” according to the established legal norms.
The former president has been one of the first Peruvian politicians investigated for the bribery scheme of the Brazilian company Odebrecht in the country, when it was revealed that he accepted the payment of 35 million dollars to award the construction of the southern Interoceanic highway.
Arévalo avoided answering whether it is feasible for Toledo to receive pretrial detention at his home, as his defense has suggested, because “any request from any inmate is always evaluated” and he does not know “what the state of Mr. Toledo’s health is.”
In addition, the head of the Judiciary added that the 77-year-old ex-president is about to arrive in Peru, but he avoided confirming if he will be in Lima tomorrow, Sunday, as some local media have advanced.
In an interview with EFE in the town of Menlo Park, where he lived in recent years, Toledo declared last Thursday that his health “is very bad.”
“I take 14 pills a day, I have hypertension and I suffer from the remnants of cancer (…) Just respect that, they haven’t tried anything and they already want to put me in jail,” said Toledo in the company of his wife Eliane Karp.
On Friday, the Peruvian Interior Minister, Vicente Romero, said in statements to the press that a team from Peru will travel to the North American country “probably in the next few hours” and, without giving further details, said that for the moment there is no date of arrival from Toledo to Peru, nor is it known if the ex-president will travel on a private plane.
In 2019, the founder of the extinct Peru Posible party was already arrested in California, where he taught at Stanford University, due to the extradition mandate that weighed on him, but a year later he was placed under house arrest after considering that his health could be in jeopardy during the pandemic.
Last September, the US Justice gave the green light to the extradition of Toledo to Peru, having found sufficient evidence to justify this measure, which was endorsed in February of this year by the State Department.
