A Costa Rican court has ordered three months and 22 days of preventive detention for a man surnamed Arias, known by the alias “Diablo,” in a resolution issued yesterday. The term runs from the date of his detention on July 24 to November 16, 2026. In the same resolution, the court imposed five months and 26 days on a co-defendant surnamed Pérez, alias “Tan,” a period that expires on December 27, 2026.
The numbers were read by much of us as an anticlimax, and the criticism reached the top of the executive branch. Before the Public Ministry issued its explanation, President Laura Fernández said publicly that a three-month term would be the greatest embarrassment the judiciary could produce. Legislator Kattia Calvo separately questioned the result. Neither reaction accounted for what the Public Ministry set out hours later, which is that the terms are a statutory ceiling rather than a measure of how seriously the court treats the case.
Under ordinary criminal jurisdiction in Costa Rica, preventive detention in a single case is capped at 18 months. Both men had already spent time in preventive custody during earlier stages of this same file. What the Tribunal Penal del II Circuito Judicial de Limón granted yesterday was not a fresh term but the unused remainder of that 18-month allowance — three months and 22 days left for Arias, five months and 26 days for Pérez.
The Fiscalía Adjunta contra la Delincuencia Organizada asked for exactly those figures because they were the only ones available to it. The hearing began at 1:30 p.m. and was held in private at the Tribunales del I Circuito Judicial de San José, moved there from Pococí for security reasons.
November 16 is therefore a procedural checkpoint rather than a release date. The Public Ministry has said the expiry of the term does not mean either man automatically walks free, and that it will seek an extension before the Tribunal Penal de Apelación de Sentencia, the body that decides preventive detention once the ordinary 18-month limit has been exhausted.
The court also declared the case one of organized crime, applying article 10, subsection 1 of Law 9481, which created Costa Rica’s specialized organized crime jurisdiction. That declaration moves the file out of ordinary jurisdiction, and the Public Ministry has said it will ask the specialized tribunal to take over several of the causes against both men. If that request is granted, the maximum preventive detention terms available in the case can double.
The file on which yesterday’s order was issued concerns two homicides and one attempted homicide, allegedly committed as contract killings, along with a charge of criminal association. The events under investigation date to Pococí in 2015. Neither man has been tried, and both remain presumed innocent.
If you don’t know by now, both were detained during an operation in Sarapiquí that the Organismo de Investigación Judicial named Operation Némesis. Agents were met with gunfire on entering the property, and the exchange lasted roughly an hour. Five OIJ officers were wounded, one seriously enough to be flown to San José by helicopter.
A third man, surnamed Ríos Oconitrillo and known as “Coco Guácimo,” was killed by after firing on agents. Investigators later reported recovering assault rifles, ammunition and drones from the scene, and estimated that some 2,500 rounds were fired. Arias and Pérez are being held in maximum-security cells at La Reforma.
The scale of the case is what has kept it at the center of national attention. OIJ interim director Michael Soto told a press conference at the Supreme Court that the three criminal structures linked to Arias, Pérez and Ríos Oconitrillo are connected to approximately 360 homicides — around 200 attributed to the first group, 100 to the second and 60 to the third.
Soto was explicit that the figure attaches to the structures rather than to the three men individually, and described it as conservative. He said the organizations controlled drug distribution, cigarette and liquor smuggling and score-settling across Pococí, Sarapiquí, the Northern Zone, Cañas, Liberia, Santa Cruz, Turrialba, Quepos, Parrita, Garabito, Osa, Guácimo, Batán, Valle La Estrella and Nicoya.
Soto also warned that removing the leadership of three structures at once could produce violence rather than calm, as sellers inside and outside those groups move to take territory. The precedent he pointed to is the 2012 capture of a man surnamed Zamora Solórzano, alias “El Indio,” which set off a fight over drug-selling zones in southern San José that left more than 110 people dead by 2015. Zamora was sentenced to 70 years in prison in 2015.
Arias’s defense attorney, Cristian Rodríguez, told reporters that his client’s release had been effectively impossible given the years spent as a fugitive, the gravity of the alleged offenses and the new accusations arising from the July 24 operation. Rodríguez has filed a challenge before the tribunal against security measures imposed on his client by the Ministry of Justice, and has said he may take the matter to the Constitutional Chamber.
What happens on November 16 now depends on two decisions that have not yet been made — whether the appeals tribunal grants the extension the Public Ministry has said it will request, and whether the specialized organized crime tribunal assumes the file. Until then, the date on the resolution marks the limit of what one court was permitted to order, not the length of time anyone expects these men to spend in custody.
