After three years on the lam, a Nicaraguan man was arrested and convicted in his country for murdering his significant other in the Guanacaste town of Filadeldia, in Costa Rica.
The man was identified as Misael García Calero, sought by Santa Cruz authorities for the murder of 38-year-old Patricia Quiñones Acuña, on September 19, 2015, in the house where they lived together.
García killed his live-in partner with a hammer and then fled to Nicaragua, his native country.
After almost three years on the run, on January 25 of this year, García was captured in San Pedro de La Paz, in the Carazo department of Nicaragua, according to prosecutor Manrique Morales of the Santa Cruz district attorney’s office.
And on October 1, in an abbreviated trial, in a Nicaraguan court, Garcia pleaded guilty to the murder of his partner. He is now awaiting sentencing.
The prosecutor stresses that with this arrest and conviction of Garcia they bring some peace to the family of the victim.
But this is not the first time a foreigner commits a crime in Costa Rica and then flees the jurisdiction. Some get away with it, Nicaraguans, for the most part, don’t.
Nicaragua does not permit the extradition of its citizens, it does, however, try its own for crimes committed abroad.
Nicaraguan justice is quicker, arrest, trial, and conviction taking months instead of years as in the case in Costa Rica.
More: Why Is The Costa Rica Judicial Process So Slow Compared To Nicaragua?
In July 2016, the “Matapalo Monster” accused of murdering an entire family in Guanacaste in February of that year, who fled to Nicaragua, was convicted there to 183 years in prison.
According to sources who spoke to the Q, Nicaraguans don’t necessarily run back home to avoid paying the price for their crimes, rather they prefer, if and when caught, to be tried at home and serve out their time in a Nicaragua than in the Costa Rica prison system.
More cases of femicide
Authorities in Costa Rica are concerned on the rise in femicides in the country. So far this year there have been 18 femicides, while in 2016 and 2017 there were 26 cases in each year.
In the last week alone three women were died at the hands of their significant others, in Rita de Pococí, Grecia and Cariblanco de Sarapiquí.
In the Cariblanco case, a man identified by his last name Pérez, a 31-year-old handyman, is alleged to have killed his wife, Marili Catalina Rojas Jiménez, 44 years of age, stabbing her in the neck on Sunday.
He fled to Nicaragua.
On Tuesday, the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) confirmed Nicaraguan police detained Perez in the Leon department on Monday
