Former Guatemalan police chief Erwin Sperisen, who had been sentenced to 15 years in jail for complicity in murders, walked free from prison on Friday after Switzerland’s highest court overturned his conviction.
The judgement from the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland sends the case back down to the Geneva canton for a retrial, finding the original conviction unsafe.
Sperisen was seen leaving the Witzwil prison, west of the Swiss capital Bern. Questioned by a journalist, he said he was “in shock” and maintained his innocence, describing his treatment by the Geneva justice system as “an injustice”, the Swiss news agency ATS reported.
His lawyer Florian Baie saif: “It’s a huge victory… an important step towards the complete rehabilitation of our client and his honour.”
Sperisen, a Guatemalan and Swiss dual national, had been found guilty of complicity in the murders of seven prisoners in Pavon jail in September 2006. Friday’s ruling quashed that conviction.
In reaching its ruling, the federal court examined a June 2023 decision by the European Court of Human Rights on Sperisen’s case. The ECHR condemned Switzerland for what it found was a lack of impartiality on the part of a judge in the Geneva Criminal Appeal and Review Chamber.
It noted that observations made by the judge in question in October 2017 “went beyond the statement of a simple suspicion”, and considered that Sperisen “could reasonably fear that the judge had a pre-conceived idea on the question of his guilt”.
The Federal Supreme Court referred the case to Geneva canton’s Criminal Appeal and Review Chamber so it can “resume the investigation” from the stage it reached in October 2017 — before Sperisen’s trial in 2018.
Reacting to the conviction being quashed, the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office said Sperisen now “must be retried”.
The office said: “The judgement rendered by the ECHR and the judgement rendered today by the federal court relate exclusively to the question of the appearance of partiality of a judge and in no way on the reasons which led to the conviction of Mr Sperisen.”
Born in 1970, Sperisen has always maintained his innocence. He resigned as Guatemala’s national civil police chief in 2007 and moved to Geneva.
Swiss citizens can be tried at home for alleged crimes committed outside the country. He was arrested in 2012 in Geneva. At the end of a long legal process, the Criminal Appeal and Review Chamber of Geneva canton sentenced him to 15 years in jail for complicity in murder, the sentence that was quashed on Friday.
