Peru's former first lady flees to Brazil for asylum after she and ex-President Humala sentenced to prison
Peru's former First Lady Nadine Heredia has fled to Brazil, where she has been granted diplomatic asylum after a court in her home country sentenced her and her husband, former President Ollanta Humala, to 15 years in prison on money laundering charges.
She landed in the capital Brasilia with her son on Wednesday, her lawyer Julio Espinoza told CNN.
According to the Peruvian Foreign Ministry, she had requested asylum at the Brazilian Embassy in Lima on Tuesday morning. Brazil granted asylum to her and her son and the Peruvian government provided guarantees for their safe passage, it said.
Heredia's lawyer said she had applied for asylum due to an unspecified family reason.
'A family and personal decision happened about two to three hours before the sentencing,' he said, adding that he only found out about her asylum request through the media.
Her arrival in Brazil comes just a day after she and her husband were sentenced in a trial relating to alleged illicit contributions to Humala's election campaigns in 2006 and 2011.
Prosecutors had alleged that Humala's Nationalist Party received illicit contributions from the Venezuelan government and the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to finance his campaigns.
Humala and his wife had denied any wrongdoing.
Humala was in attendance as a judge read out the verdict on Tuesday, three years after the trial began. Heredia did not attend.
Moments after the ruling was announced, the judiciary ordered Humala to start serving his sentence immediately and be sent to prison.
His lawyer, Wilfredo Pedraza, criticized the decision as unjustified and told CNN they would appeal.
'The panel has said that the illegality of the crimes can be verified along the way – that is inadmissible. Here, in oral trial and in sentencing, affirmations must be made, no longer presumptions,' he argued.
The former first lady's lawyer said Wednesday that if the case is appealed, she may attend the hearings virtually from Brazil.
Prosecutors were seeking 20 years in prison for the former president and 26 years for the former first lady.
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