The Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, avoided commenting on the situation faced by the nationalist senator Gustavo Penadés, accused of sexual exploitation of minors by the trans nationalist militant, Romuna Celeste Papasso. “I am Minister of the Interior and I have to give the guarantees of due process. It is now in the hands of the prosecutor and We are not going to make comments that could hinder or derive attention from what has to be proven in Justice,” he said Thursday in statements to the press.
A few days ago, Heber attended the public statement that Penadés made in Parliament as a sign of support. And when consulted a day later, he assured that Papasso’s accusation was a “defamation and that it should be resolved in Justice”.
“(Penadés) goes to court while the other person (Romina Celeste Papasso) is going to destroy the networks. Justice is the path that the senator has chosen and the senator is confident, because he is very calm,” the Interior Minister had said.
Those statements earned him criticism from the opposition. “If the Ministry of the Interior –which is the one that has to assist the Justice and its subordinates, who are the ones who are going to investigate– is conditioned by the opinion of the minister, that’s wrong,” said the president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereira.
And he also targeted the President of the Republic, who in an informal dialogue with journalists last week assured that he believed Penadés. “I believe him“, he said when asked about the complaint that the militant Papasso had made publicly hours before. After those words, the president added that he trusted that Justice could determine the responsibilities in this case.
“It is wrong for the President of the Republic to make this a problem of belief. When it is an investigation problem. But this has nothing to do with the case, but with how political actors mix in the case and make these complaints fear of believing one or the other,” Pereira told a local media outlet in Soriano.
Another reference of the opposition that criticized Heber was the former vice president Lucía Topolansky. “At this moment in the function of the police institute, he is an adviser, an instrument of the Prosecutor’s Office. He explicitly takes sides. That is a gesture that was better not done, because he can call him without anyone finding out to express his support (to Penadés) but making it public puts pressure on those who deal with the case,” he said on March 30 in statements to Universal 970.
This Thursday, after participating in an activity in Florida, Heber pointed out: “Media situations are resolved in another way. Here you had to go to Justice and the senator went and announced that he was going to renounce his privileges to submit to it. He is in the hands of the prosecutor and the Police, who are not under my direction, but who do have the support of the direction that the prosecutor makes in the investigation ”.
Papasso, a 30-year-old trans woman, assured on Tuesday the 28th in an interview with the television program We do what we can what had been sexually abused by Penadés when she was 13 years old and had not yet started her gender transition.
The militant recounted that at that moment, in 2007, she was walking through Parque Batlle when a gray car stopped next to her and invited her to get in. According to her, Penadés was the one she was driving and she He went to a motel, where they had sex.. He also pointed out in the public complaint that after the meeting the senator asked for her phone number and called her some time later to see each other again.
The legislator, for his part, made a public statement in which he denied abusing Papasso and assured that he did not admit that for having a certain “sexual orientation” he was accused of being a “pedophile”. He in turn said that he made himself available to the Justice to investigate the case, something that the Prosecutor’s Office finally decided to do ex officio.
