Colombia’s Senate approved a referendum to be held about a new law,
allowing judges to send child molesters and murderers of minors to jail
for life.
In the last debate, the Senate approved the referendum, which will now be sent to President Alvaro Uribe for sanctioning and then to the Constitutional Court for a final test. If both Uribe and the high court agree with the bill, the National Registry will be summoned to organize a national referendum on the subject.
The bill is to ask the Colombian people whether “homicide, the rape and exploitation of minors, severe ill-treatment and the abduction committed against children under fourteen years old and children with physical of mental disabilities, are punishable by sentences up tolife imprisonment.”
Congress chose 14 years old, taking the possibility into account that minors in between 14 and 18 could use the life imprisonment for extortion purposes.
Colombia was shocked by a number of widely televized scandals involving the kidnapping and murder of young children in 2008.