Former President Rodríguez Launches Attack on Ministerio Público
Former president Miguel Angel Rodríguez, in his first declaration since he traded his jail cell in La Reforma prison for the comfort of his home, under house arrest, has come out attacking the Ministerio Público, assuring that since their case against him is so weak, they have preferred to judge him by way of public opinion.

That is the main message contained in an article in the newspaper Panamá América which published the story yesterday.

Rodríguez who was president of Costa Rica from 1996-2002, stepped down in disgrace from his position of Secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS) on October 15, 2004, to return to Costa Rica to face charges of corruption and illegal enrichment for his role in the ICE-ALCATEL scandal.

The former president is accused of taking huge sums of money as payoffs from the French telecommunications firm ALCATEL for being awarded the multi million dollar contract by the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) to install the current GSM cellular telephone network.

Rodríguez was met at the airport by Judicial agents who, in front of national television cameras, handcuffed him and scurried him in a "perrera" like a common criminal to the courthouse in San José, where after a brief period under house arrest, a judge ordered him to spend his preventive detention in jail.

A later ruling overturned that decision and returned the former president to house arrest.

Rodríguez insists that he is being "psychologically tortured", is a victim of a press lynching and his human rights have been violated and was and is being held "illegally".

The former president accuses the Judicial system for permitting the "circus" - the allowing the presence of the press at the time of his arrest on October 15, where everyone except his lawyer was present and didn't even give him a chance to get off the airplane.

He further accuses that he was kept in preventive detention when there was no chance of his fleeing and impeding the investigation. Rodríguez made it clear that it was his choice to return to Costa Rica of his own free will.

Rodríguez also bears his attack against current president Abel Pacheco, who he accuses of violating the separation between the powers of  government in asking him that he resign his post at the OAS while still innocent.