Exclusivo: Primera entrevista de Aída Victoria Merlano después de su condena

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Ay Da Victoria Merlano is an influencer
of enormous impact in Colombia. Each of

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your social media posts is viewed by
hundreds of thousands of people. She is

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also the daughter of Senator Aida Merlano, who is in prison for electoral crimes

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and who four years ago escaped from
a dental practice by hanging on a rope,

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an image that remained in the memory
of many Colombians. Oh, Da

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Victoria. The daughter is just 24
years old. She is beginning her life,

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but has just been sentenced in second
instance to thirteen years and ten months

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in prison as a co- author
of the crime of using minors to escape

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prisoners. The minor he used,
according to the sentence, is his brother

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Stephen, who by the day of
the escape was seventeen years old. Today,

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victory grants the report colonel, the
first interview after the harsh sentence.

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Accompanying her is her lawyer, the
criminalist MiguelÁngel les Río, who already

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announced that he will file the extraordinary
appeal of cassation with the Supreme Court of

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Justice for the case to be reviewed
by the highest court in Colombia. I

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thank you both for being with us. Initially there is victory. You were

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how old you were when your mom
ran away. He was twenty years old,

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that is, he was just three
years older than his brother Esteban and

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why he believes that justice established that
you were the one who used his brother

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just a little younger and not his
mother, the senator who, being the

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mother, would have the most ascendant
over him. If I gave you my

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completely sincere opinion, because in order
to institute an insurance measure, they would

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not have been able to do so
as violently as they did if they were

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simply accusing me of escaping prisoners.
I' m sorry they got together.

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This is me in my head who
thinks about it, but I feel like

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they got together and we thought how
we do to be a media show with

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it and lower the pressure that we
were blown away by a person of national

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interest. How we do to show
a result. We' re going to

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put the dam in, but to
get the dam in, we need to

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put in a felony that' s
very serious. And I feel that the

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one who married them the most at
the time was instrumentalization of minors, because

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of the only fact that my brother
and I were in the same place,

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at the time of the events and
that he was a minor. That'

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s what I think. How do
you remember your mother' s escape,

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that escape that many Colombians saw in
the video of the Security Chamber. There

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' s one thing, and it' s hard for me to remember the

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escape, because I didn' t
see it. When my mom threw herself

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in the office, I had already
left the room where she threw herself.

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So all I remember that day was
going out with my brother. Like she

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always asks my mom out before she
gets picked up, because she doesn'

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t like my brother seeing her handcuffed
and ready. That' s what I

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remember, what happened when and how
you found out about your mom' s

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escape plan. I find out my
mom' s running away because I'

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m in a mall and she calls
a friend of my mom' s and

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tells me where you are. So
I' m telling you right now at

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the Andean mall that in fact,
I have proof of my bank statement from

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that day that I just paid at
the Andean mall. I think it'

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s been about an hour since my
mom' s escape and she tells me

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all the news that your mom ran
away is coming out. We' ll

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confirm. And that' s when
I found out he' d already run

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away. But to see woe of
victory. Who carried the suitcase with the

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rope from which she took off,
tied herself in that office to escape.

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According to my mom' s account, she screws the rope in her body

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and leaves the prison with the rope
screwed in her body. And when my

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mom comes in, because I see
her my mom had like a little nightgown

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downstairs, she had a white shirt
and, in fact, if they have

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videos of how she came in,
of drinking that specifically. She was quite

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robust and had a bag jacket on
her. And then, all of a

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sudden, already throughout the visit,
my mom already had a white shirt and

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looked much thinner. I mean,
this isn' t a subject I'

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m making up. It' s
just that if you see how he got

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in and if you see how he' s doing before he elopes, he

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obviously looks a lot less robust,
so it does make sense to curl the

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rope in the body. And what
she has told him so many years later,

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what she has told him about that
escape, about how it was preparing

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it, how she thought about who
her accomplices were for the escape. Obviously,

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I' m not going to start
talking about accomplices, but I love

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to breathe. I swear to you, master, I love life, we

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love to breathe. I wouldn'
t want to, all of a sudden,

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end up out there in a ditch
with a shot in the forehead.

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So, to me, I kind
of don' t like talking about people

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that I know is terrible, so
all I can tell you is that my

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mom, obviously, the reason she
ran away is because her life was in

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danger. There' s a victory. I see from the expression that you

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make that you' re afraid that
they might hurt you. There are a

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number of persons mentioned as accomplices,
among these lawyers, to them, unlike

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theirs. Nothing has happened to them, they have not been convicted, they

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are still on the street without any
problems. Yeah, yeah, but if

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they' re doomed, just like
me, I' m in this snitch

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I' m in. And if
they don' t have any problems,

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just like I' m in the
chicharrón I am. I don' t

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really think about whether someone deserves it
more than I do or whether someone should

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be in my shoes. That does
seem a little inconsequential to me. I

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just know I' m in a
very complicated, very complicated situation. But

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what your mom says about your 13- year and 10- month prison sentence

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to her, as a mother you
should feel it especially when you are just

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twenty- four years old and are
starting your life. Yeah, obviously,

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like any mother, it hurts everything
that' s going on. He feels

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deeply guilty. I' ve told
you so many times. Don' t

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be sorry about what' s already
happened. Don' t be sorry for

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what this circumstance was. Actually,
although it has been so hard, so

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difficult, it has taught me so
much, it has made me grow as

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a woman, it has given me
a different view of the world, it

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has given me even a profession and
I think that, in the midst of

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how difficult it is to me it
has brought me more good things than bad

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and obviously it seems to me an
ex abrupt. It is aside, exaggerated,

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I miss the whole context of my
condemnation of the truth. At some

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point, in addition, they said
that you were going to be prosecuted for

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money laundering that wasn' t just
the leak. There was like a big

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storm of rumors around you. Some
of which seemed to come from the prosecution

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itself. You guys were getting that, let' s say that media storm

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at the time. Yes, I
wasn' t going to be prosecuted for

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money laundering, but for illicit enrichment. They are two crimes that look alike,

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but they are not the same,
because in one and it means that

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they identified a third person whom I
am washing money, which is money laundering,

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and in the other, which is
illicit enrichment. It' s just

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you have some income. You don' t fit in our heads because you

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have them. Let us presume that
you are illicitly enriching or otherwise, prove

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us otherwise. In colloquial words,
that' s it. I was going

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to be prosecuted for illicit enrichment In
the end, the prosecutors had no evidence

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to do so, and that process, practically by calling it chaste words,

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died to victory. Let' s
get back to the issue of the escape.

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You want to ask him directly.
He admits he made some mistake.

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You admit some mistake in this episode
of your mom' s escape. I

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don' t recognize any mistakes.
I didn' t instrument my brother and

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the people he says either. Obviously, she must have known, as the

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judge actually said. She knew her
mother was going to run away. She

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saw he was going to run away. That' s not a crime.

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If I had known, if I
had seen, if I had watched,

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I could have been sitting down eating
crispette watching with my mom, she would

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run away. But that' s
not a crime I had neither the legal

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nor the moral obligation to report it. In fact, I wasn' t

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involved in that leak. I did
not orchestrate the escape as the judge says,

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being sincere that an escape of such
magnitude and with such preparation, it

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is like a bit absurd to think
that a person who was in college and

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who had an accessory venture, because
it is that I, at that time

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had a project of earrings and I
myself responded to my messages and I myself

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sold to my earrings and was studying
at the University, because orchestrating that leak

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so cinematic, the truth is very
absurd that he thinks that I was the

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criminal mind. Behind that, Dr
Rio, I' m going to ask

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you a question. How is the
procedure followed to invoke the extraordinary appeal of

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cassation before the Supreme Court of Justice
and how long will it take before having

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a final decision of the Supreme Court? I know those times may vary,

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but how much you estimate what can
happen before you have a decision to send

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her to jail or set her free. Yes, Daniel, since the decision

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we had five days to inform the
Tribunal that the casuation claim would be filed.

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From there a 30- day term
begins which ends on 15 May of

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that year and from there the Court
was, let us say, delayed between

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a year and a half and two
years to take a decision on it.

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Daniels is a little in the time
frame for the Court to decide the extraordinary

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appeal case. Thank you very much
and thanks to go to victory for granting

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us the first interview, after the
harsh sentence you received in second instance also

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to Dr. MiguelÁngel del Río, for having accompanied us and for having

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illustrated us about what is coming in
this case. There' s a victory.

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Merlano twenty- four years, one
of Colombia' s most recognized influences.

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His publications have hundreds of thousands of
answers. Today she was on the

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Colonel Nos report.