Judge drops trial against journalist accused of creating meme

Two years after being denounced and imprisoned in a cell, the journalist from La Paz Luis Muñoz welcomed the end of the “judicial ordeal” that he had to endure since 2022. This Wednesday The 18th anti-corruption court declared the defective procedural activity founded raised by the defense of the communicator and declared the inadmissibility of continuing with it. In this way, the trial brought for creating a meme was closed.

“The accusation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office must be annulled and ordering the return to the precautionary court to continue with the jurisdictional control. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, once it has assessed and considered the details of this decision, will assume the corresponding decision,” said Judge Javier Mamani Zarate at the hearing held this Wednesday.

Luis Muñoz is a journalist from La Paz who worked as a public relations officer for the Mining Administrative Jurisdictional Authority (Ajam). In April 2022, he created a meme on the orders of the highest authorityBrenda Lafuente, at that time. Almost immediately she accused him of discrediting her and ordered her aide to arrest Muñoz and seize his cell phone to prove her official’s guilt.

Once the cell phone has been split, No evidence of the complaint was found that Lafuente had made and the prosecution was modifying the accusation. “The Public Prosecutor’s Office cannot include any other circumstance in its legal arguments than the factual facts with which it bases its accusation,” the judge indicated in the hearing.

He added that The prosecution only transcribed the complaint filed by the alleged victimbut did not present evidence of this complaint, and the telephone expert’s report could not support the accusation of political violence that the prosecution maintained.

The Federation of Press Workers of La Paz (FTPLP) issued a statement in which condemned that an ordinary court He tried to bring a journalist to trial and recalled that there are jurisdictional instances that journalists have.