Exclusivo: Primera entrevista de Aída Victoria Merlano después de su condena

0:00 Ay Da Victoria Merlano is an influencer of enormous impact in Colombia. Each of your social media posts is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. She is also the daughter of Senator Aida Merlano, who is in prison for electoral crimes and who four years ago escaped from a dental practice by hanging on a rope, an image that remained in the memory of many Colombians. Oh, Da Victoria. The daughter is just 24 years old. She is beginning her life, but has just been sentenced in second instance to thirteen years and ten months in prison as a co- author of the crime of using minors to escape prisoners. The minor he used, according to the sentence, is his brother Stephen, who by the day of the escape was seventeen years old. Today, victory grants the report colonel, the first interview after the harsh sentence.

0:58 Accompanying her is her lawyer, the criminalist MiguelÁngel les Río, who already announced that he will file the extraordinary appeal of cassation with the Supreme Court of Justice for the case to be reviewed by the highest court in Colombia. I thank you both for being with us. Initially there is victory. You were how old you were when your mom ran away. He was twenty years old, that is, he was just three years older than his brother Esteban and why he believes that justice established that you were the one who used his brother just a little younger and not his mother, the senator who, being the mother, would have the most ascendant over him. If I gave you my completely sincere opinion, because in order to institute an insurance measure, they would not have been able to do so as violently as they did if they were simply accusing me of escaping prisoners. I' m sorry they got together.

1:52 This is me in my head who thinks about it, but I feel like they got together and we thought how we do to be a media show with it and lower the pressure that we were blown away by a person of national interest. How we do to show a result. We' re going to put the dam in, but to get the dam in, we need to put in a felony that' s very serious. And I feel that the one who married them the most at the time was instrumentalization of minors, because of the only fact that my brother and I were in the same place, at the time of the events and that he was a minor. That' s what I think. How do you remember your mother' s escape, that escape that many Colombians saw in the video of the Security Chamber. There ' s one thing, and it' s hard for me to remember the escape, because I didn' t see it. When my mom threw herself in the office, I had already left the room where she threw herself.

2:49 So all I remember that day was going out with my brother. Like she always asks my mom out before she gets picked up, because she doesn' t like my brother seeing her handcuffed and ready. That' s what I remember, what happened when and how you found out about your mom' s escape plan. I find out my mom' s running away because I' m in a mall and she calls a friend of my mom' s and tells me where you are. So I' m telling you right now at the Andean mall that in fact, I have proof of my bank statement from that day that I just paid at the Andean mall. I think it' s been about an hour since my mom' s escape and she tells me all the news that your mom ran away is coming out. We' ll confirm. And that' s when I found out he' d already run away. But to see woe of victory. Who carried the suitcase with the rope from which she took off, tied herself in that office to escape.

3:46 According to my mom' s account, she screws the rope in her body and leaves the prison with the rope screwed in her body. And when my mom comes in, because I see her my mom had like a little nightgown downstairs, she had a white shirt and, in fact, if they have videos of how she came in, of drinking that specifically. She was quite robust and had a bag jacket on her. And then, all of a sudden, already throughout the visit, my mom already had a white shirt and looked much thinner. I mean, this isn' t a subject I' m making up. It' s just that if you see how he got in and if you see how he' s doing before he elopes, he obviously looks a lot less robust, so it does make sense to curl the rope in the body. And what she has told him so many years later, what she has told him about that escape, about how it was preparing it, how she thought about who her accomplices were for the escape. Obviously, I' m not going to start talking about accomplices, but I love to breathe. I swear to you, master, I love life, we love to breathe. I wouldn' t want to, all of a sudden, end up out there in a ditch with a shot in the forehead.

5:04 So, to me, I kind of don' t like talking about people that I know is terrible, so all I can tell you is that my mom, obviously, the reason she ran away is because her life was in danger. There' s a victory. I see from the expression that you make that you' re afraid that they might hurt you. There are a number of persons mentioned as accomplices, among these lawyers, to them, unlike theirs. Nothing has happened to them, they have not been convicted, they are still on the street without any problems. Yeah, yeah, but if they' re doomed, just like me, I' m in this snitch I' m in. And if they don' t have any problems, just like I' m in the chicharrón I am. I don' t really think about whether someone deserves it more than I do or whether someone should be in my shoes. That does seem a little inconsequential to me. I just know I' m in a very complicated, very complicated situation. But what your mom says about your 13- year and 10- month prison sentence to her, as a mother you should feel it especially when you are just twenty- four years old and are starting your life. Yeah, obviously, like any mother, it hurts everything that' s going on. He feels deeply guilty. I' ve told you so many times. Don' t be sorry about what' s already happened. Don' t be sorry for what this circumstance was. Actually, although it has been so hard, so difficult, it has taught me so much, it has made me grow as

6:34 a woman, it has given me a different view of the world, it has given me even a profession and I think that, in the midst of how difficult it is to me it has brought me more good things than bad and obviously it seems to me an ex abrupt. It is aside, exaggerated, I miss the whole context of my condemnation of the truth. At some point, in addition, they said that you were going to be prosecuted for money laundering that wasn' t just the leak. There was like a big storm of rumors around you. Some of which seemed to come from the prosecution itself. You guys were getting that, let' s say that media storm at the time. Yes, I wasn' t going to be prosecuted for money laundering, but for illicit enrichment. They are two crimes that look alike, but they are not the same, because in one and it means that they identified a third person whom I am washing money, which is money laundering, and in the other, which is illicit enrichment. It' s just you have some income. You don' t fit in our heads because you have them. Let us presume that you are illicitly enriching or otherwise, prove us otherwise. In colloquial words, that' s it. I was going to be prosecuted for illicit enrichment In the end, the prosecutors had no evidence to do so, and that process, practically by calling it chaste words, died to victory. Let' s get back to the issue of the escape.

8:05 You want to ask him directly. He admits he made some mistake. You admit some mistake in this episode of your mom' s escape. I don' t recognize any mistakes. I didn' t instrument my brother and the people he says either. Obviously, she must have known, as the judge actually said. She knew her mother was going to run away. She saw he was going to run away. That' s not a crime. If I had known, if I had seen, if I had watched, I could have been sitting down eating crispette watching with my mom, she would run away. But that' s not a crime I had neither the legal nor the moral obligation to report it. In fact, I wasn' t involved in that leak. I did not orchestrate the escape as the judge says, being sincere that an escape of such magnitude and with such preparation, it is like a bit absurd to think that a person who was in college and who had an accessory venture, because it is that I, at that time had a project of earrings and I myself responded to my messages and I myself sold to my earrings and was studying at the University, because orchestrating that leak so cinematic, the truth is very absurd that he thinks that I was the criminal mind. Behind that, Dr Rio, I' m going to ask you a question. How is the procedure followed to invoke the extraordinary appeal of cassation before the Supreme Court of Justice and how long will it take before having

9:39 a final decision of the Supreme Court? I know those times may vary, but how much you estimate what can happen before you have a decision to send her to jail or set her free. Yes, Daniel, since the decision we had five days to inform the Tribunal that the casuation claim would be filed. From there a 30- day term begins which ends on 15 May of that year and from there the Court was, let us say, delayed between a year and a half and two years to take a decision on it.

10:22 Daniels is a little in the time frame for the Court to decide the extraordinary appeal case. Thank you very much and thanks to go to victory for granting us the first interview, after the harsh sentence you received in second instance also to Dr. MiguelÁngel del Río, for having accompanied us and for having illustrated us about what is coming in this case. There' s a victory. Merlano twenty- four years, one of Colombia' s most recognized influences. His publications have hundreds of thousands of answers. Today she was on the Colonel Nos report.