Jujeña justice ordered the release this Monday, at the request of the prosecutor, of the two men who served 50 days in prison accused of having posted messages on social networks about an alleged infidelity of Calm down Snopekthe wife of the former governor Gerardo Morales. The “immediate release” was arranged in the morning and was carried out after 7 p.m.
However, the arrest warrant against the third defendant remains in force: Lucia Gonzalez, a 42-year-old architect who would have reproduced the rumor in private WhatsApp groups. The judge issued the arrest warrant against her on January 26. Pablo Pullen Llermanosthe same one who kept prisoners Nahuel Morandini y Roque Villegas. This Monday, the releases were ordered by the judge Salvador Ortiz.
As for González, the prosecutor in the case, Walter Rondon, this Monday opposed the lifting of the arrest warrant issued against her. It was at a hearing that took place at 6:00 p.m., at the request of the defense. Rondón overtook THE NATION that, despite what he said at the hearing and without prejudice to the fact that she “decided to flee to Uruguay,” he will request that the arrest warrant be suspended. “Today I wrote a letter to suspend the arrest warrant until González appears. “I am going to request the suspension of the arrest warrant for 72 hours,” he said. According to the prosecutor, if she showed up, he would not request her arrest. “If he comes, I will not ask for his arrest. Only standards of conduct that she must comply with during the process. What I want is for the case to move forward and no one can be tried in absentia,” the prosecutor told THE NATION.
González’s defense maintains that she is in the unusual situation of facing a criminal case, with an arrest warrant that remains in force, despite the fact that with her statements “she never left the reserved, private sphere of WhatsApp.”
The order to stop “immediately” the preventive detention of Morandini and Villegas was issued at a hearing this morning, after 10, at the request of the prosecutor. Rondon. It was a surprising move. That hearing was not scheduled last week. It was summoned yesterday, Sunday, because the prosecutor requested it. “I received the notification at 11 p.m. yesterday. [por el domingo]”, said Marcos AldazabalMorandini’s lawyer THE NATION.
How did the prosecutor argue his change of mind? According to him, there is no longer a “procedural risk” that justifies keeping them imprisoned. “Attentive to the status of the case and having been duly notified of the request for a summons to trial, this party considers that it is appropriate to request the cessation of detention of those accused since there are no more measures to take, there is no evidence [pendientes]and the procedural risk evidently becomes abstract,” said the prosecutor during the hearing, to whose film record he had access THE NATION. The facts that the prosecutor cites as the reasons for his change of mind are not news of the last few hours. The request for elevation to which Rondón alludes is from nine days ago and the content of the phones, the central evidence on which he based his accusations, has been in the file for weeks.
The case against Morandini and Villegas, which will continue, was initiated by a complaint from Tulia Snopek on January 4. A day later, the two men were arrested. They and González are accused of crimes that, added together as the prosecutor intends, could leave them in prison until eight years: psychological injuries (to Snopek) and impact on the identity of a minor (Snopek and Morales’ two-year-old daughter).
At the hearing this Monday morning, the prosecutor requested the release of Morandini and Villegas, but requested that “the restrictions and rules of conduct” that weighed on the accused be maintained; That is, they were prohibited – the prosecutor explained – from “making tweets, posts or communications in relation to the victim.” The defenders opposed it: they said it was a constitutional right to be able to refer to the case. The complaints also demanded that the defendants be prohibited from making statements about the file and its victims. The representative of the Provincial Council of Women, which depends on the province of Jujuy (whose governor, Carlos Sadir, answers to Gerardo Morales), also questioned the dissemination that the progress of the cause had in recent days in the media..
“Disobedience”
Tulia Snopek’s lawyer, José Roberto Ivanovich, also made a formal presentation in the case in which he denounced “judicial disobedience” to Morandini’s wife, Lucía Castro Olivera, whom he accuses of having “provided precise information about the case” to THE NATION, despite the fact that the parties had been informed – says Morales’ wife’s lawyer – of the “strict secrecy of the proceedings.” He specifically questioned whether this medium had reported on the conclusions of the psychological study of Snopek with which the “psychological injuries” attributed to the defendants were based.
On January 5, when the prosecutor justified in a hearing the need to keep Morandini and Villegas detained, he said that it was necessary to take into account “the penalty that could be applied to them,” which is high. He alleged that “some lawyers,” based on Supreme Court rulings, say that the expectation of punishment is not sufficient reason for preventive detention, but that this is “anachronistic.” He also maintained that, if released, they could continue posting on networks and even “intimidate” potential witnesses. Furthermore, within the framework of the need for the arrests, he stated that the serious damage to Snopek and his daughter had to be taken into account, and said: “The existential virginity of a child under two years of age cannot be repaired, it will be a complaint, but the damage is irreparable.”
In criminal proceedings, the rule is freedom. Preventive detention should only be ordered – according to the Supreme Court and international standards for the protection of human rights – when there is a procedural risk; that is: danger of flight or that, if he remains free, the accused could hinder the investigation.
Last Friday, jurists and specialists in constitutional law from different lines of thought consulted by THE NATION They agreed to express their concern about this case. They questioned that two people were accused of serious criminal offenses for what they posted on social networks and criticized, above all, that they had been imprisoned for more than a month and a half.
Morandini He was arrested because he published a tweet in which he stated that it seems that “one of the tekis teaches the former governor’s wife how to play the quena” and Roque Villegas, because he reposted messages about Snopek’s alleged infidelity on his Facebook account. Later, rumors went viral in Jujuy that took this forbidden relationship as true or that questioned, many in a joking tone, Morales’ paternity (he has a two-year-old daughter with Snopek).
According to the prosecution, the two accused are responsible for this viralization, they planned it and were aware of the harm they would generate, the same as González.
The architect insisted that she did not post on social media about this topic. “I only use Instagram and I didn’t post anything,” she said. “They accuse me of something that was discussed in a WhatsApp group of eleven people. I’m talking about gossip, I say it clearly, it’s gossip I heard at the grocery store. I did absolutely nothing else,” she stated. According to what the prosecutor told THE NATION, she would be responsible for a premeditated maneuver with other people to make rumors viral and harm the Snopek-Morales family. Rondón responded that at the moment he could not give more details about how he based his accusation against González, but he stated that the analysis of the phones provides evidence that he participated in the “viralization plan.”
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