The Minister of Foreign Affairs maintained that it was a regular administrative process and insisted on the need to modify the 2014 decree.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Bustillo, said this Monday during the questioning carried out by the Broad Front for the passport given to Sebastián Marset that “No there was a legal problem”.
“This is a decree that we realize today is perfectible. As Minister Heber pointed out, Mr. Marset does not have an open case in Uruguay and there was no international requisition until March 3 “, Bustillo said.
Marset was arrested in the United Arab Emirates on September 10, 2021, with a passport that was true on its physical support [la libreta]but I had a false impression.
Along these lines, the Foreign Minister said that what was warned by the person in charge of Business of the Embassy of Paraguay in Qatar was “simply that a Uruguayan had been arrested carrying a false passport”, and that it was “a Uruguayan soccer player”. (profession that appeared in the passport).
“It is not correct that it has been warned about its danger”, Bustillo clarified.
The minister assured that on October 20 the Consular Section made telephone contact with Marset for the first time, with his lawyer in the United Arab Emirates and with his legal representative in Uruguay, Dr. Alejandro Balbi.
In this line, Bustillo said that 77 days have passed since Marset was detained at the Dubai airport, when “normally, any Uruguayan who requests it can access the passport in five days.”
The foreign minister reported that the National Directorate of Scientific Police responded to the National Directorate of Civil Identification that Marset had no open cases in Uruguay at the end of November, and on the 30th of that month, an authorization letter signed by the person involved was sent so that a third party could withdraw the passport in Uruguay.
“All the steps that had to be done within the framework of consular assistance and the 2014 decree were complied with. There was no express processing or delivery. I repeat, 77 days have passed since Marset was detained. Everything was within the natural and normal consular assistance”, indicated Bustillo, who highlighted the figure of Marset became public after March 3 and an article by Search.
In this sense, Bustillo added: “This was an administrative procedure, at no time was Minister Heber or the speaker aware of it. Not even the undersecretaries. It didn’t belong that way. There are 482 Uruguayan prisoners abroad who are permanently receiving consular assistance. It is not appropriate for him to be aware of every administrative procedure.”
In turn, the minister said that the “Uruguayan passport did not release Marset”, but rather it was the Justice of the United Arab Emirates that granted him freedom 30 days after receiving the document.
The hierarch insisted that “there was no legal impediment to giving Marset a passport”, that is why it is “essential to modify the decree”.
“There was no political responsibility of Minister Heber or Minister Bustillo. They were an administrative procedure that we found out about in February-March when the requisition appeared. There was no impediment to following the normal course of procedures that were followed.”affirmed the foreign minister, who insisted that the issuance of the passport was a regular administrative procedure.
