Uruguay
Questions Raised Over Transfer of Prosecutor From Team Investigating Dictatorship Crimes in Uruguay
The decision was made by the prosecutor general, Mónica Ferrero. The Association of Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Detainees of Uruguay expressed concern about the impact on the specialized prosecutor's office for crimes against humanity.
The prosecutor general, Mónica Ferrero, ordered the one-week transfer of a member of the prosecutor’s office specialized in crimes against humanity to the 12th shift Flagrancy Prosecutor’s Office, Subrayado reported. The reassigned prosecutor is part of the team led by Ricardo Perciballe.
According to that outlet, Ferrero justified the measure by arguing that the specialized prosecutor’s office handles few cases, while other offices are overloaded with work.
The decision was questioned by the Asociación Madres y Familiares de Uruguayos Detenidos Desaparecidos, which issued a statement in support of Perciballe’s work and that of his team. It expressed concern over decisions that, in its view, call into question or weaken the functioning of that prosecutor’s office.
In that statement, the organization said the prosecutor’s office has 25 cases under the new criminal code and more than 125 under the previous system. It also noted that a report by the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances warned about attacks against the specialized prosecutor’s office, its limited structure and the lack of a regulatory basis guaranteeing its continuity.
Familiares also said that investigations and trials for crimes committed during the last dictatorship, between 1973 and 1985, are legal obligations of the Uruguayan state and called for the specialized prosecutor’s office for crimes against humanity to be strengthened.
Sources
Sobre esta nota. Written by El Notero with assistance from artificial intelligence, based on what was published by the cited outlet. El Notero did not do its own reporting on this event.
