Primera entrevista de Aída Victoria Merlano después de su condena

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In Colonel Daniel' s double or
report. Thank you for this report today,

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which is an absolute first. Go
ahead, please, with the one

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- way victory. Hay da Victoria
Merlano is an influencer of enormous impact in

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Colombia. Each of your social media
posts is viewed by hundreds of thousands of

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people. She is also the daughter
of Senator Aida Merlano, who is in

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prison for electoral crimes and who four
years ago escaped from a dental practice by

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hanging on a rope, an image
that remained in the memory of many Colombians.

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Oh, victory. The daughter is
just 24 years old. She is

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beginning her life, but has just
been sentenced in second instance to thirteen years

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and ten months in prison as a
co- author of the crime of using

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minors to escape prisoners. The minor
he used, according to the sentence,

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is his brother Stephen, who by
the day of the escape was seventeen years

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old. Today, victory grants the
report colonel the first interview after the harsh

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sentence. Accompanying her is her lawyer, the criminalist MiguelÁngel le Río,

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

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

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

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

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

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and why he believes that justice established
that it was you who used your

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

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being the mother, would have more
ascendant over him. If I gave

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you my completely sincere opinion, because
to institute an insurance measure they would not

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have been able to do so as
violently as they did if they were simply

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accusing me of running away from prisoners. I' m sorry they got together.

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

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

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

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national interest, how we do to
show a result. We' re going

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

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

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

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because 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 gave 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 when and how you found out
about your mom' s escape plan.

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I find out my mom' s
running away because I' m in a

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mall and she calls a friend of
my mom' s and tells me where

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you are. So I' m
telling you right now at the Andean mall

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that in fact, I have proof
of my bank statement from that day that

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I just paid at the Andean mall. I think it' s been about

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an hour since my mom' s
escape and she tells me all the news

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that your mom ran away is coming
out. We' ll confirm, and

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that' s when I found out
he' d already escaped. But to

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see woe of victory. Who carried
the mallet with the rope from which she

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took off tied herself in that office
to escape. According to my mom'

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s account, she screws the rope
in her body and leaves the prison with

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the rope screwed in her body.
And when my mom comes in, because

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I see her, my mom had
like a little nightgown downstairs, she had

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a white shirt and, in fact, if they have videos of how she

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came in, of drinking that specifically. She was quite robust and had a

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beige jacket on her. And then, all of a sudden, already throughout

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the visit, my mom already had
a white shirt and looked much thinner.

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I mean, this isn' t
a subject I' m making up.

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It' s just that if you
see how he came in and if you

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see how he bursts before he runs
off, he obviously looks a lot less

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robust. So it does make sense
to curl the rope in his body and

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what he has told him So many
years later, what she has told him

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about that escape, about how he
was preparing it, how he thought it,

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who his accomplices were for the escape. Obviously, I' m not

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going to talk about accomplices, but
I love to breathe. I swear to

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

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' t want to, all of
a sudden, end up out there in

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a ditch with a shot in the
forehead. So, to me, I

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kind of don' t like talking
about people that I know is terrible,

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so all I can tell you is
that my mom, obviously, the reason

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she ran away is because her life
was in danger half victory. I see

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from the expression that you make,
that you' re afraid they might hurt

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you. There are several persons mentioned
as accomplices, among them lawyers. Unlike

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them, 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
I' m in this snitch I'

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

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still in the snitch I really don' t think about whether anyone deserves it

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more than I do or whether someone
should be in my shoes. That does

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seem a little inconsequential to me.
I just know that I was in a

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very complicated situation, very complicated.
But what does his mom say about his

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13- year, 10- month
prison sentence? To her, as a

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mother you should feel it especially when
you are just twenty- four years old

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and are starting to climb up yes. Obviously, like any mother, she

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hurts everything that' s going on, she feels deeply guilty. I'

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ve told you so many times.
Don' t be sorry about what'

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s already happened. Don' t
be sorry for what this circumstance was.

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Actually, although it has been so
hard, so difficult, it has taught

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me so much, it has made
me grow as a woman, it has

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

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profession and I think that, in
the midst of how difficult it is to

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me it has brought me more good
things than me bad and obviously it seems

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an ex abrupt. It is aside, exaggerated, I miss the whole context

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of my condemnation of the truth.
At some point, in addition, they

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said that you were going to be
prosecuted for money laundering, which was not

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just the escape. There was like
a big storm of rumors around you,

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some of which seemed to come from
the prosecution itself. You guys were getting

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that, let' s say that
media storm at the time. Yes,

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I wasn' t going to be
prosecuted for money laundering, but for illicit

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enrichment. They are two crimes that
look alike, but they are not the

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same, because in one and it
means that they identified a third person whom

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I am washing money, which is
money laundering, and in the other,

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which is illicit enrichment. It'
s just you have a revenue to us

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It doesn' t fit in your
head because you have it. Let us

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presume that you are enriching illicitly or
if you do not prove otherwise, in

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colloquial words. That' s what
they were going to prosecute me for illicit

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enrichment. In the end, the
prosecution had no evidence to do so.

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And so that process, practically by
calling it chaste words, died to victory.

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Let' s get back to the
issue of the escape. You want

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

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mistake in this episode of your mom' s escape. I don' t

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recognize any mistakes. I didn'
t instrument my brother and the people he

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says either. Obviously, she must
have known, as well as in fact,

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

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

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crime. If I had known,
if I had seen, if I had

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watched. I could have been sitting
down eating chryspeta, watching my mom run

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

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nor the moral obligation to denounce her. In fact, I wasn' t

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involved in that leak. I did
not orchestrate the escape, as he 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 had

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

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to my earrings and was studying in
college. Well, orchestrating that leak so

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cinematographic, it' s very absurd
for him to think 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 put her in
the lingre. Yes, Daniel, since

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the decision we had five days to
inform the Tribunal that the casuation claim would

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be filed. From there a term
of thirty working days begins that ends on

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the 15th of May of that year. And from that point on, the

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Court was to take between a year
and a half and two years to make

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a decision on it. Daniels is
a little in the time frame for the

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Court to decide the extraordinary appeal case. Thank you very much and thank you

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to Go to Victoria for giving us
the first interview, after the harsh sentence

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you received in second instance, also
to Dr. MiguelÁngel del Río,

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for having accompanied us and for having
illustrated us about what is coming in this

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case. To go to Victoria Merlano
of twenty- four years one of the

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most recognized influences of Colombia. His
publications have hundreds of thousands of answers.

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Today she was on the Colonel report. See you soon.