PRIMAVERA CASE: FAKE MOTHER TO STAND TRIAL

Guatemala, August 13, 2012. Today, at the Fourth Court of the First Instance for Criminal Matters, Drug Trafficking and Crimes against the Environment, a hearing to open oral arguments was held against Sandra Noemí Maldonado Velásquez de Chajón. Maldonado Velásquez is accused of human trafficking, criminal association, alteration and omission of marital status, misuse of marital status, misrepresentation and the use of fake documents. Maldonado Velásquez is accused of allegedly being involved in the illegal adoption of the child Angely Liseth Hernández Rodríguez.

At the hearing, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) presented its investigation, which demonstrates Maldonado Velásquez's involvement in aiding the recruitment, harboring and reception of the girl Angely Liseth Hernández Rodríguez. Hernández Rodríguez was subjected to an illegal adoption process through which she was handed over to a pair of foreigners, Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan.

The judge of the Fourth Court of the First Criminal Instance ordered that oral proceedings be initiated against Maldonado Velásquez on the aforementioned charges. The judge also granted definitive participation to CICIG (as a complementary prosecutor), the Attorney General of the Nation's Office (PGN), the Fundación Sobrevivientes [Survivors Foundation], and the actual mother of the girl, Loyda Elizabeth Rodríguez. The judge indicated that there is impunity in the present case, because the girl is still in the hands of the foreigners and she has not been given back to her family.

A hearing to submit evidence was scheduled for August 18, 2012 at 10.30 a.m.

BACKGROUND FACTS:
On April 12, 2012, National Civil Police officers, accompanied by officials from the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) and CICIG, arrested Maldonado Velásquez in Zone 18 of the capital for her alleged involvement in the Primavera case, in which she is accused of assuming a false identity (that of Felícita López García) to facilitate the illegal adoption of the girl Angely Liseth Hernández Rodríguez. Maldonado passed as the mother of the girl, who had also been falsely identified as Karen Abigail López García.

The child Angely Hernández was taken on November 3, 2006 from the patio of her house, located in the municipality of San Miguel Petapa in the department of Guatemala City. She was then handed over with false papers to an adoptive family from outside of Guatemala.

CICIG acts as a complementary prosecutor in this criminal proceeding.