Peru’s Supreme Court upheld the ten-year prison sentence, 240 days’ fine and permanent firearms ban given to Johan Alejandro Uchatuma Albites for illegally possessing explosives and a firearm with ammunition, together with drug trafficking.[1] The Supreme Court’s permanent criminal chamber ruled on 24 March 2025 on the appeal of the 8 November 2023 judgment of the First Permanent Criminal Appeals Chamber of Ate, which had confirmed the conviction at first instance.[1]

Police of the anti-extortion unit Divise and the Divreing stopped him in Huaycán, in the district of Ate, on 7 March 2022 during the “Anti-extortions 2022” operations, when he was in the passenger seat of a Toyota Yaris with plate AUL-527.[1] The car search found, under the passenger seat where he sat, 36 grams of marijuana together with 49 grams of coca paste and one gram of cocaine hydrochloride.[1] Officers also found three homemade fuse bombs and a revolver with a filed-off serial number and three .38 cartridges under that seat.[1]

His defence argued that the drugs and weapons had been planted because no prosecutor or defence lawyer was present at the detention, search and drug seizure.[1] The court held that Peruvian law does not require a prosecutor or defence lawyer at such preliminary police steps, which are pre-constituted acts carried out in urgent circumstances and in flagrante delicto, and found no support for the claim that police planted the material.[1] The court did not enter the sufficiency of the evidence itself, because that review belongs to the appellate court that had ratified the conviction.[1]

The charges at trial were possession of explosives, possession of a firearm and ammunition, and drug trafficking under the former micro-commercialisation drug offence.[1] The first-instance court also ordered him to pay 6,000 soles in civil damages.[1]