After seven minutes of declaring, the prosecutor in the Astesiano case, Gabriela Fossati, asked Gustavo Leal not to continue speaking. For her, what she had said so far, deserved to change the quality of witness from him to investigated. This Wednesday, the lawyer of the former ministerial chief, Diego Camaño, delivered a letter to the Prosecutor’s Office asking that the reasons be explained to him.
The Observer reported that same day that the Prosecutor’s Office again summoned Leal to testify next Tuesday. However, Camaño, when consulted by Búsqueda, explained that this summons is prior to the presentation of the brief and demanded: “First the Prosecutor’s Office has to inform us of the charges and then I will define the steps to follow.”
As a result, prosecutor Fossati told The Observer: “The methodology of the investigation is defined by the Prosecutor’s Office. If it deems pertinent to raise objections, it must go through the formal legal channels. The ‘media trials’ provoked by summoning the media to the door of the Prosecutor’s Office at times when that a document is presented are not regulated in the Criminal Procedure Code”.
The lawyer explained this Wednesday at the door of the Prosecutor’s Office that if the investigation were reduced to the visit he made to the parents of Alejandro Astesiano, it took place in Barra do Chuí (Brazilian side) and the Prosecutor’s Office has no jurisdiction.
“We request that the prosecutor say what are the apparently criminal acts that are imputed to her. We also ask that she explain why the Internal Affairs Directorate acted, a unit that reports directly to the (Interior) Minister and whose task is to investigate the personnel (police),” he said at the time.
For Fossati, “it is not correct to speak of ‘charges’ in an informal investigation instance” and insisted that the Criminal Procedure Code “does not regulate extrajudicial incidents.”
In turn, he affirmed that the coordinator of his Prosecutor’s Office already explained to him that she in person will attend to all his concerns next Tuesday.
