A MAN who lives peacefully as a quiet family guy has been arrested three times and nearly deported, just because of his name.
27 January 2023 , 20:45
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Rene Martínez Gutierrez has been arrested three times simply because of his name even though he has no criminal recordCredit: Facebook
However he has been detained three times in the last 13 years simply because he shares the same name as a Peruvian drug dealer with numerous arrest warrants out for him, both in his country and overseas.
He was last arrested when he returned to Columbia to visit his dad and he was approached by Interpol officials as he arrived at the airport.
Gutierrez has been in jail ever since.
His first arrest occurred in 2010 when he visited a local police station in Bogota to ask for his judicial record so he could start a business.
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When cops checked his record, they found that Gutierrez had an international arrest warrant in Peru.
After being released having been locked up for eight days, Gutierrez went to the Peruvian Embassy to find out why he had been arrested.
Officials said they didn’t know why it had happened, but they assumed it was because he had the same name as a well-known criminal.
Columbian officials then arrested him again in 2011, this time spending two months in prison, in the infamous La Picota jail.
He had been called to a Bogota police station to make a statement after his workplace had been robbed.
But when cops checked his name in the database, they once again mistook him for the wanted Peruvian drug baron.
His wife, Yesenia Contreras, told El Tiempo: “His name and date of birth coincided with a person who was wanted for being an accomplice to a man who transported 20 kilos of cocaine embedded in a television in Peru in 2006.
"I almost died. Then, they gave me his wallet, his cell phone and the wedding band and they took him to the dungeons.”
After managing to prove his innocence, Gutierrez and his family left Columbia and went to the US, where he lived for a decade.
Earlier this month though he returned in order to say goodbye to his sick father but was once again detained by the authorities.
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Interpol agents boarded the plane right after it stopped on the airport runway, asked for his ID and after confirming his name, escorted him away.
He is currently being held in the Los Martires police station.
His sister told Noticias Caracol: “They did not give him the opportunity on Saturday morning when he arrived in Colombia to arrive in Colombia, on the plane they asked for his ID, Interpol entered and arrested my brother.”