The fiscal Gabriela Fossati filed a complaint for defamation and insults against the president of the Broad Front, Fernando Pereirathe editor of the magazine Faces and masks, Alberto Grille, and three users of social networks. The reasons that led the prosecutor to take this measure were the public statements by Pereira and the opinion columns written by Grille, in which they questioned Fossati’s actions in the case of former head of presidential custody Alejandro Astesiano.
According to judicial sources, the complaint is based on an accumulation of grievances and questions towards the Prosecutor’s Office, and in particular towards the person of the prosecutor. Fossati felt aggravated by Pereira’s statements, who questioned whether the prosecutor had acted in accordance with the right to go from witness to being investigated to the former director of Coexistence and Citizen Security Gustavo Leal. Pereira affirmed that Fossati “has not acted in accordance with the law”, and that “there is no person linked to politics [dentro del Gobierno] that it has remained under investigation.”
For his part, Grille wrote two opinion columns in which he questioned the transparency of the abbreviated trial that sentenced Astesiano, and accused Fossati of sacrificing “transparency, public debate, equality before the law, the right of the accused, the fair assessment of the evidence and the exhaustiveness of the investigation. Grille also transcribed in his column alleged statements made by Fossati in which he mentioned that in the Astesiano case “nothing can be investigated because all those who can contribute to the investigation are named.”
Fossati considers that these statements and opinion columns affect his honor and reputation, and decided to file a complaint for defamation and libel at the Prosecutor’s Office. In addition to Pereira and Grille, the prosecutor also denounced three users of social networks.
The complaint filed by Fossati demonstrates the importance of political and journalistic actors being careful when issuing statements or writing opinion columns that may affect the honor and reputation of third parties. In a context of political polarization, it is necessary to maintain a respectful and objective discourse, and avoid defamation and insult in all its forms.