Juan Carlos Izquierdo says he did not kill Naomi Arcentales and that he suffers media lynching

The suspended Manabí prosecutor, Juan Carlos Izquierdo, first appeared before the media after the death of his partner, Naomi Arcentales, whose death a prosecutor from Guayas is investigating.

Accompanied by his lawyers, Izquierdo made a statement at a press conference organized at a hotel in Guayaquil, where he did not answer questions from the media, but assured that a media lynching has been committed against him and that is why he has not been able to mourn for the loss of Naomi, who died by hanging according to the first autopsy, pending the result of the second forensic examination that was carried out after the exhumation of her body.

“I did not kill Naomi, I am not a murderer, I am not a femicide, I am innocent. Unfortunately, social networks, the media and certain social communicators have made a parallel trial, to the point that a conviction has been obtained against me on the networks ”, began his statement.

He explained that the day he found Naomi dead in her room, he called “desperately” the ECU911 and the Prosecutor’s Office. On this point, lawyer Julio César Cueva added that Izquierdo was not the only one who discovered the body, that there are two more witnesses who saw her enter and never leave the suite where she lived with her client in Manta alive again.

“Both Criminalistics, Dinased and the Prosecutor’s Office came to the conviction that it would be a suicide,” said Juan Carlos. And both he and his defense trust that the new autopsy will confirm his innocence.

Cueva did not want to refer to the viralized video after Naomi’s death, in which it is seen that she suffers a slap in the face at a reception or to the chats disclosed by the victim’s family that indicate that she suffered physical and psychological abuse, “because that ( accusation of injuries) is not part of the investigation and (the images) would first have to be examined by the Prosecutor’s Office ”. The object of investigation is Naomi’s death, but not the alleged abuse.

For Cueva, this disclosure is about pressure, for his client, too, even in his short statement he spoke of “economic and political interests”, but he did not say who.

However, he mentioned that “at no time did he have her in a repressive situation.”

“Naomi was not only my girlfriend, she shared moments with my family, which gave her what she could not obtain in her childhood, her childhood or her coming of age. My aspiration was for her to study and be a lawyer in the courts of the Republic of Ecuador, “said Izquierdo.

Cueva also referred to the “illegal detention” of Juan Carlos last Tuesday night. He was arrested for five hours. The National Police explained that their system was “Hacked” and that for this reason a false alert was issued from the Court of Criminal Guarantees of the Court of Justice of Manabí.

The lawyer denies that the police system has been violated and that his client was arrested without a capture ticket. “The illegal detention of Juan Carlos has nothing to do with the investigation process,” Cueva said.

Izquierdo’s other lawyer, Santiago Mestanza, said that a complaint will be filed with the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate “the fraudulent handling of the National Police system” and that they will take this case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “to order the Ecuadorian State comply with due process ”.

Mestanza also questioned the actions of the president of the Council of the Judiciary, María del Carmen Maldonado, who ordered Izquierdo’s suspension from his functions as an employee of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Manabí without grounds for any misconduct related to his work. (I)