Jochy;s defense lawyers challenge judge

SD. The judge for Permanent Attention, Jose Alejandro Vargas, last night sent the challenge by the defense lawyers representing Jose Angel Gomez Canaan (Jochy) to the Appeals Court of the National District. The lawyers had challenged the judge, who was to decide on coercive measures for their client, after the District Attorney for the National District filed charges of identity theft and illicit access to e-mail accounts.

Carlos Balcacer challenged Judge Vargas because it was this judge that signed the first three search warrants when the persecution against Gomez Canaan began. In the judgment of the defense lawyer this shows a principle of bias against his client.

It will be up to the Appeals Court to reject or admit the challenge next Monday. In the meantime, Gomez Canaan continues to be detained in the holding cells of the District Attorney's office.

During the process last night, which went on for more than four hours, the defense lawyers for Gomez Canaan had asked for the inhibition of Judge Vargas, but the request was rejected by the magistrate.

At the beginning of the hearing, the Justice Department presented the reasons for the accusations. Indicating what the District Attorney had presented during a press conference and requesting one year of preventive custody for Gomez Canaan.

Yesterday morning

During a joint press conference between District Attorney Yeni Berenice Reynoso and the Chief of Police, Jose Armando Polanco Gomez, it was said that Gomez Canaan had intervened in more than 44 e-mail accounts of businessmen, diplomats, artists, journalists and politicians.

Among the owners of the accounts that were hacked were the Minister of Economy, Planning and Development, Temistocles Montas; Carlos Manuel Bonetti, Luis Alvarez Renta, Felix Jimenez, Tony Lama, Manuel Antonio Grullon, Avelino Abreu, George Nader, and Aristedes Fernandez Zucco.

Gomez Canaan allegedly had the collaboration of a group of international hackers who were paid US$100 for every account they could get into, or US$1000 a month, according to the information offered by the director of the Department of Criminal Investigations and High Tech Crimes of the National Police (DICAT), Licurgo Yunes Pere. The officer referred to the webpage activehacker.com as one of those used by Gomez Canaan, as well as his ties and communications by text messaging with a specialist in India and another one in Vietnam.

In all of the cases, the defendant had used the IP address of an account in the name of his mother, Asuncion Canaan de Gomez.

The investigations against the defendant began last December, after Ms. Regina Isabel del Rio complained about the return of a message that she had not received.

The investigations were able to determine, after obtaining data offered by the phone company that offered the internet service, that in order to send the message the IP address 70-38-71-64 which belongs to the domain danilomedina.rd, administrated by Danilo Diaz and that had been rented in Canada. Nonetheless this domain had been used as a trampoline by the defendant, who also used another five IP addresses for his connections.

First Lady

Although from the start of the investigations there had been commentaries about an alleged hacking of the e-mail account of the First Lady, Margarita Cedeño de Fernandez, yesterday the District Attorney Yeni Berenice Reynoso reported that they were not able to determine if this had occurred. Nonetheless, she made it clear that the investigation included the help of the National Investigation Department (DNI), because the information that was being handled included the name of the President of the Republic, Leonel Fernandez.