The country’s Supreme Court ordered that Peru’s ousted former president Pedro Castillo be held in pretrial detention for 18 months on Thursday, as hundreds of his supporters demonstrated outside the courthouse and across the country.
Castillo, a former teacher and union leader from rural Peru, was impeached and ousted from office last week after attempting to dissolve Congress and impose an emergency administration, a move lawmakers condemned as a coup attempt.
He has since been accused of rebellion and conspiracy, both of which he rejects.
The lengthy incarceration reflects the complexity of the case and possible flight risk, according to Supreme Court Judge Juan Carlos Checkley, after prosecutors warned that the ex-president would seek asylum outside the country and indicated the probe would take 18 months. According to Castillo’s lawyers, the former leader is not a flight risk.
Castillo remained silent in court. However, in a subsequent hearing earlier this week, he defended his actions, stating that “I have never committed the crime of conspiracy or insurrection,” and that he still considered himself president.
“I will never resign and abandon this popular cause,” he said at the time.
In the days since his removal from office, Castillo’s supporters have taken to the streets in cities across the Andean nation, in what some protesters described as a “national insurgency.”
“Peru has declared ourselves in a state of insurgency, a national insurgency, because we do not owe obedience to a usurping government,” one protester in Lima said Thursday, referring to Castillo’s successor and former vice president Dina Boluarte, who was swiftly sworn into the presidency by Congress hours after her former boss’s impeachment.
Another protester described Peru’s judicial system as “corrupt” and Castillo’s detention as a kidnapping.
“(Castillo) is kidnapped, we are outraged, it’s the national insurgency in Peru,” she told news agency Reuters.
At least 11 individuals have died as a result of the protests. According to the local health service, four people were killed and at least 39 were injured after protestors clashed with police near an airport in Peru’s southern district of Ayacucho on Thursday.
Peru’s current government has used both a stick and a carrot to deal with protesters. President Boluarte has proposed the idea of conducting early elections, while her Defense Minister Luis Alberto Otárola last week announced a state of emergency and dispatched troops to the street.
However, efforts to quell the protests appear to have fallen short of addressing the protestors’ main grievances, which regard the country’s political environment as corrupt and unorganized, and accuse Peru’s elite of unfairly overthrowing their chosen government.
“If the people of Congress consider themselves so democratic, then respect the people’s voice, respect that we voted for (Castillo),” protester Sonia Castaneda told Reuters.
Protesters have also demanded a general election, the dissolution of Congress, and the formation of a new constituent assembly.
Some socialist leaders in the region have fueled their rage. Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, and Bolivia expressed concern about Castillo’s fate in a joint statement on Monday, stating he had been the victim of “undemocratic harassment” since his election last year and asked Peru to honor the results of last year’s presidential poll.
Peru retaliated on Thursday by summoning ambassadors for a consultation over “intervention” in Peru’s “internal affairs,” Foreign Minister Ana Cecilia Gervasi said on social media.
Castillo, who had never held public office before becoming president, campaigned on a promise to share wealth and lift the country’s poorest.
But his government was in disarray, with scores of ministers being appointed, removed, fired, or resigning in less than a year. Castillo himself faced many corruption investigations and two unsuccessful impeachment attempts until he was dismissed last week.
