The sexual crimes prosecutor Mariana Alfaro explained that he requested a search warrant at the radio station Blue FM this friday at noon to “obtain” the cell phone of journalist Ignacio Álvarez, “but not to seize the rest of the radio’s computers and materials”as reported to the portal 25 seven.
He explained that it was an “authorization to seize or search elements”, usual procedure “when the owner of those goods refuses to deliver them”. And he emphasized that “it is a judicial order that is obtained in case of refusal.”
“As the investigation proceeds You have to carry out all the procedures and one was the search request which, in the end, did not materialize because –I reiterate– Absolutely nothing was seized from the radio,” he insisted.. The procedure generated controversy in public opinionand the discussions even reached the political arena.
Alfaro did not notify the court prosecutor, Juan Gómez, before ordering the search, he knew The Observer. However, prosecutors have technical independence before the procedures although, in some complex cases, it is usually done.
“It was intended to obtain his cell phone to find out to which two other people those audio and video records were transferred, because the broadcast programs indicate that they were transferred to third parties”Alfaro said this Saturday, referring to the content recorded in the early hours of Sunday, January 23, when a 30-year-old woman reported having been raped in the Cordón neighborhood of Montevideo.
From there, the investigation took legal order and Three men are preventively imprisoned, after the Justice charged them at midnight this Friday for aggravated sexual abuse. One of them was also charged with a crime of dissemination of images with pornographic content without the authorization of the victim.
The prosecutor added that “There is a fourth audio that Álvarez’s program did not broadcast and it aims to find out where it derived from”. In the radio broadcast last Tuesday the program Fishbowl issued several audios, from videos in which the victim and those involved appear.
Álvarez received a phone call to report to Interpol headquarters and bring with him the devices used to produce the show. The driver refused to do so.
By last, Alfaro said he was aware that “the investigation fell on a journalist but a crime is being investigated with the appropriate rationale for the case,” he said.. Even the court prosecutor ordered an ex officio investigation into the dissemination in Fishbowl of the audios linked to the rape case in Cordón, as Gómez said on Wednesday to The Observer.
