El expresidente peruano Ollanta Humala, sale de prisión tras la anulación de su condena

Dressed in a blue suit, the 64-year-old former military officer emerged into a dense crowd of supporters and flashing cameras following a ruling by Peru's Constitutional Tribunal that dissolved the sentence keeping him confined in a specialized facility at a police base east of Lima, as reported by Ntn24 and t13.cl.

With his voice breaking and tears in his eyes, Humala denounced his imprisonment as a targeted political assault. According to infobae.com and Semana, he told reporters outside the prison enclave that he had been subjected to state-sponsored kidnapping and judicial persecution that forced his family into exile.

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"Hemos sido víctimas de una persecución política y judicial (...). Fui secuestrado por el Estado y sicarios del sistema de justicia"

Ollanta Humala, former president of Peru, via Semana

The sudden reversal stems from a habeas corpus petition sustained by the Constitutional Tribunal, which determined that the prosecution violated fundamental constitutional guarantees, according to ntn24.com and critica.com.pa. Prosecutors had secured a 15-year sentence against Humala in April 2025 for laundering assets through the acceptance of campaign contributions. According to Elnacional and t13.cl, the state's case centered on allegations that Humala received millions of dollars from the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht for his successful 2011 presidential run, alongside funds originating from the Venezuelan government for his unsuccessful 2006 campaign against Alan García. Prosecutors maintained that Humala and his inner circle used more than 100 individuals of modest means as unwitting frontmen to disguise the illicit origin of the funds, as noted by elnacional.com.do.

Yet the country's highest constitutional interpreter concluded that these actions did not constitute a crime under the legal framework existing at the time. Applying the strict constitutional principles of legality and tipicidad, the court established that receiving unauthorized funds for electoral campaigns was not codified as money laundering under the modality of asset concealment until late 2016. Because the penal code lacked that specific statute during the 2006 and 2011 election cycles, the judiciary could not retroactively punish conduct that was not legally defined as a crime when it occurred, according to the tribunal's findings detailed by semana.com and Abc. This rationale mirrors the precedent established by the tribunal months prior when it ordered the dismissal of a parallel investigation into Keiko Fujimori, who faced similar allegations regarding campaign financing, as observed by elnacional.com.do and critica.com.pa.

Humala's release alters the dynamic inside the Barbadillo prison, a high-security enclosure originally built to house disgraced heads of state. During his confinement, which included running in the yard and maintaining a basic gym routine, Humala shared the compound with other prominent figures of recent Peruvian political history, including Alejandro Toledo, who was sentenced to 20 years for money laundering, Martín Vizcarra, serving a 14-year corruption sentence, and Pedro Castillo, imprisoned following his attempt to dissolve congress, according to elnacional.com.do.

While Humala regains his freedom, his wife and former First Lady, Nadine Heredia, remains abroad. Heredia was convicted alongside her husband in the same judicial process and sought political asylum in Brasil, where she continues to live alongside one of the couple's children, as reported by infobae.com and semana.com. Defense counsel Wilfredo Pedraza confirmed that the tribunal's ruling does not automatically extend to all co-defendants, leaving Heredia's legal standing unresolved according to infobae.com.

The defense team plans to request that the judiciary apply the constitutional logic of the recent ruling to Heredia's case, but her practical path home remains obstructed. Pedraza noted that returning to Peru would require Heredia to formally renounce her Brazilian asylum status, a step she is unlikely to take while active legal threats remain, according to infobae.com.

As infobae.com reported, Pedraza emphasized that Heredia will remain abroad until her specific legal case is formally archived, making any reunion on Peruvian soil strictly conditional on the complete termination of her judicial proceedings.

While the immediate consequence of the constitutional ruling is the liberation of the former head of state, the broader judicial landscape surrounding the Lava Jato scandal in Peru remains complex. T13 notes that Odebrecht acknowledged in 2016 its distribution of millions of dollars in illicit bribes and electoral donations across the country since the beginning of the twenty-first century, drawing investigations against multiple former leaders including Alejandro Toledo and the late Alan García. critica.com.pa observed that Humala is now the first Peruvian former president convicted under the scandal to secure freedom through the total annulment of his judicial proceedings, establishing a legal benchmark closely watched by other figures facing similar campaign financing accusations.

As the legal fallout from the tribunal's decision continues to develop, the next step involves the defense formally petitioning the jurisdiction to extend the constitutional logic of the ruling to encompass Nadine Heredia, whose return from Brazil remains strictly contingent upon the complete archiving of her active judicial case, as detailed by infobae.com and critica.com.pa.