As you heard in the interview, police escorted 2 more of the escapees to Magistrate Court. They are 23-year-old Oswaldo Perez, a Guatemalan from Melchor who was convicted of drug trafficking, and 18-year-old Luis Paiz, a Belizean from San Pedro who was convicted of theft.
Both men pleaded guilty to escaping from prison when they were arraigned today before Senior Magistrate Tricia Pitts-Anderson. Like several of the prisoners from last week, they were sentenced to spend 1 year in prison, which is to run concurrently to any sentences they were serving before the jailbreak.
That means that if the DPP pursues the appeals which the Commissioner described in our previous story, these 2 defendants will be among those whose sentences will be challenged. Today, however, we got a chance to speak with the 17-year-old brother of Oswaldo Perez. He was at court to find out what intervention he could make on Perez's behalf because the teenager believes that his brother was forced into participating in the escape.
His premise is that his brother, Oswaldo, was on parole for drug trafficking and that he ended up back in jail on remand for a minor allegation of harm.
Oswaldo was to appear in court on November 3rd, two weeks from now, and his brother does not believe that he would willingly risk bail for that minor offense, just so that he could participate in the escape.
He spoke with the press off-camera at the Magistrate Court:
Voice of: Brother of Oswald Perez
"When I found out that my brother escaped, I thought, why would he escape? He only has less than a month to be in there. They don't have any reason for him, he would have come out in November. He was there for a domestic dispute, which was still under investigation. So, he still has not been charged for that, and he was still in Hattieville with all of those murderers in there."
Reporter
"Under what conditions, if you say the case was still going through the court?"
Voice of: Brother of Oswald Perez
"The same lady would have dropped the case because she realizes that it's not true. It was just a lie that she said to make my brother go in."
Reporter
"So, your brother would have been released, and yet he escaped, and now will spend a year in prison as a sentence?"
Voice of: Brother of Oswald Perez
"Yes, that's right. We still don't know why he escaped because nobody will let me talk to him. I want to talk to him to know what really happened so that I could do something about it, a lawyer, or something."
Reporter
"Sir, what's the nationality of your brother?"
Voice of: Brother of Oswald Perez
"My brother is Guatemalan. I think that's one of the things that's held him back because he's not Belizean."
Reporter
"When did he come to Belize?"
Voice of: Brother of Oswald Perez
"He came to Belize about 2 years ago."
Reporter
"And what was he doing at that time?"
Voice of: Brother of Oswald Perez
"He got captured for drug trafficking, which his drugs weren't for him, but nobody believed him. So, he had to accept it. They took his papers and all and said that he came illegally into the country."
The 17-year-old told us that he is the only blood relative of Oswaldo Perez who lives in Belize. All of Perez's other family members are from Melchor, Guatemala.
