“Each person must pay for his deeds,” says Dominican President Abinader after congressman’s arrest

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Dominican President Luis Abinader, in response to the arrest in Miami of Congressman Miguel Gutiérrez Díaz for his alleged involvement in international drug trafficking, said on Tuesday that each person should pay for his deeds.

“Everyone is responsible for their deeds; everyone should pay for their deeds,” Abinader told the press at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) after participating in the opening of the Social Pact.

Abinader’s statements are in line with those of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM). Abinader and Gutierrez Diaz belong, which in a press release said that “each citizen is personally responsible for his or her actions before the State”.

The congressman, 58 years old and representative of Santiago, was arrested at the Miami airport after arriving on a commercial flight from the Dominican Republic, according to a press release from the National Drug Control Directorate (DNCD).

The arrest was made by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, coordinating with the DNCD and the Attorney General’s Office of the Dominican Republic.

According to the formal indictment issued by a federal grand jury in Miami on March 11, 2021, from approximately 2014 to 2017, Congressman Gutierrez Diaz was part of a transnational drug trafficking network that operated in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and the United States.

Gutiérrez Díaz will make his first appearance before U.S. District Judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes today, according to a statement.

The congressman and three others are charged with conspiring to import and distribute cocaine in the United States and face life in prison if convicted.