A group of experts met at the Round Table on Transparency and Governability yesterday, Tuesday 16 October and expressed their consternation at the “roughshod and hurried” way in which the deputies approved the changes to Law 136-03 n the Minors’ Code. They did not like what they saw. The group of lawyers brought together by the Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (Finjus) claimed that the modifications the deputies made to the Code would force officials to establish the age of adolescents on the basis of a bone test and not with a birth certificate. They said that with these modifications the deputies established that this test would prevail over any other means of proof, including a birth certificate and a “cedula.”
“With the proposed legislation for this law, the proof will be what truly determines the fact of whether someone is or is not a minor, and not the birth certificate,” says a document released by Finjus yesterday, Tuesday 16 October. They argue that to make things even worse, the deputies eliminated the last part of Article 279 of Law 136-03, which says: “In no case can liberty be taken away in order to prove the accused adolescent’s age.” They went on to itemize other sections that they felt were erroneous and which would only lead to longer prison terms.