A few days ago, a complaint by the Feminist International emerged, for which it accuses before the Nation’s prosecutor, Juan Gómez, the prosecutor for Sexual Crimes, Raúl Iglesias, of filing some 300 cases in just over a week of work.
For his part, the Court Prosecutor ordered the initiation of an administrative investigation in order to ascertain the differences between the number of filed cases, publicly indicated by the Prosecutor, and those arising from the system.
Iglesias had been transferred more than a week ago from Artigas to the Sexual Crimes Prosecutor’s Office and one of the measures he advanced was the request for house arrest for those accused of gang rape of a woman in the Cordón.
For his part, the lawyer of the victim of gang rape in the Cordón neighborhood, Juan Raúl Williman, submitted a brief to the Court Prosecutor for understanding that Iglesias made decisions that “vulnerate and do not protect the victim.”
pressures
As a result of the events, the prosecutor Iglesia explained that he decided to file the cases, not because he is the bad guy in the movie, but because they are cases that have not moved for two years or more and cannot prosper, because there is no useful evidence. These are cases that arose between 2018 and 2021, in which not enough evidence was collected to formalize the investigation and charge the accused, the victims of these complaints cannot be located, there are no witnesses, no evidence. physical, then the decision is to concentrate on those that can work. In this sense, he said that there are another 650 cases in his Prosecutor’s Office and that some of them are close to being formalized, so it is convenient to prioritize.
He said, in statements to different media outlets, that the Court Prosecutor should not give in to pressure from any group, not from lawyers, Non-Governmental Organizations, or political parties.
He assured that he does not feel the support of the Court Prosecutor, Juan Gómez, and, in addition, he said that he asked for more officials, but he has not had answers.
He also commented that at the time Gómez decided to send him to the Sexual Crimes Prosecutor’s Office for his way of working and, however, now he questions it. “I didn’t ask to go to Sex Crimes. The Court Prosecutor told me, Raúl, because of your good numbers, your good work, I want you to go to this place that is complicated, I trust you.”
The position of the court prosecutor
For his part, the Attorney General of the Nation, Juan Gómez, told Radio Montecarlo that “he requested internal information from the Prosecutor’s Office, but that the prosecutor Iglesias did not ask for any information. “The moment I consider it, I will do it or not, depending on the results.”
Regarding the lack of support that Iglesias denounced, prosecutor Juan Gómez stated that until now the only thing he had done was “fulfill his duty and the role assigned to him by Law, which is to defend the victims.”
“It was not me, as Court prosecutor, who installed all these issues in public opinion. In fact, I am analyzing, dealing with a topic that I did not seek, that I did not promote in any way, but I have to fulfill my duty with the function that I fulfill. Nothing else,” he stated.
“Specifically, I have not asked Dr. Iglesias for any information, until now,” he said.
Concern
This Wednesday, May 25, meanwhile, the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Uruguay (AAPU) published a letter addressed to the surrogate court prosecutor, Juan Gómez, in which they express “concern” about certain actions taken by different “organizations, pressure groups or operators, which are being admitted by the Attorney General’s Office that could constitute an undue affectation of technical independence, enshrined in article 5 of Law 19,483 “.
Said article grants the right “not to receive orders or recommendations from any hierarch of the institution, or authority outside of it, to proceed in a certain way in each specific case.”
“The questioning of the work of the aforementioned prosecutor to file a series of cases, in any case, must be formulated through the legal channels established in article 98.2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, by those interested in each of the investigations (the denouncers or the victims), not by a union entity that represents a certain ideology, ”they indicate in the letter.
Likewise, the magistrates consider that it is not a good sign of respect for that independence that the Attorney General’s Office orders “investigations into those cases when no specific irregularities are being denounced in the acts of the prosecutor, nor are the situations provided for in article 98.3 or 98.4 of the Criminal Procedure Code to justify them”.
The criminal lawyers affirm that “complaints are constantly filed in the different Prosecutor’s Offices throughout the country.”
At the same time, they affirm that “they are not aware that investigations have been ordered in this regard to find out the reasons or the merit of those decisions.”
“A smear campaign was generated by certain sectors, which defend an ideology against a prosecutor who publicly expressed his willingness to interpret the law, according to constitutional principles, among which equality and due process stand out,” say the prosecutors. lawyers in your letter.
They explain that the union is made up of lawyers who defend “both victims and defendants and that it only wants the Justice System to operate in accordance with those principles of equality and due process, using the rights of all those affected to protect the mechanisms enshrined in the Constitution and the law, promoting and trying to agree on improvements in their operation that respect those basic and elementary principles of the entire rule of law”.
“We will always be against actions such as those that are being carried out that seek to impose a certain ideology outside of what is established by the Constitution and the law. This situation violates these principles of equality and due process,” they point out.
