Santo Domingo,.- The Public Ministry reported this Tuesday that it will request the judges of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeals of Barahona to ratify the sentence that sentenced five men to prison terms of between 10 and 15 years for being found guilty of being part of the aggravated illicit migrant trafficking network dismantled with the Iguana Operation.
You may be interested in: Exploitation and Illicit Trafficking of Migrants
The sentence also orders everyone to pay a fine of 150 minimum wages. According to a statement from the Public Ministry, court prosecutors Yoanna Bejarán and Wendy González, heads of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office against the Illicit Trafficking of Migrants and Trafficking in Persons (PETT) and the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Barahona, explained that they will request that the sentence be confirmed in all its parts. Bejarán and González reiterated the importance of sanctioning the serious crimes that mainly affect people in vulnerable conditions, mostly women, boys, girls, and adolescents. The Public Ministry launched Operation Iguana in 2022 with nine simultaneous raids in municipalities of the provinces of Independencia, Bahoruco and Pedernales, through which the network that used the Dominican-Haitian border as a center of operations was dismantled. During the raids, the Public Ministry arrested the accused and seized as evidence seven vehicles, 127 passports of foreign citizens, approximately 116,000 pesos and 383 dollars, hundreds of documents, and a 9-millimeter caliber firearm. The indictment indicates that the defendants resorted to threats and blackmail to obtain bribes. Likewise, they deprived the people held or kidnapped of their freedom and kept them in captivity until receiving the payment demanded for their release, even resorting to threats to receive the payments.
