20 years’ imprisonment sought for former mayor Luis Valdez

The Peruvian Attorney General’s Office on Monday, May 16 filed a formal request that the former mayor of Portillo, Pucallpa province, be sentenced to 20 years in prison on a charge of having been the mastermind of the April 21, 2004 murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández. Radio Programas reported that Attorney General Jorge Chávez Cotrina in addition asked the Third Criminal Court to apply the same sentence to former judge Solio Ramírez Garay. Chávez Cotrina in addition requested that Valdez and Ramírez jointly pay reparations of 50,000 soles to the legal heirs of the journalist, who had linked the former mayor to organizations engaged in the illicit drug trade.