(IPYS/IFEX) – The Public Ministry provisionally archived charges brought by the Supreme Court of Military Justice (CSJM) against the journalists’ association Prensa Libre. Prensa Libre was being charged for allegedly using forged documents to implicate the Intelligence Service in harassment campaigns against opposition presidential candidates. The lawyer for the journalists’ association, Beatriz Mejía Moria, said […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – The Public Ministry provisionally archived charges brought by the Supreme Court of Military Justice (CSJM) against the journalists’ association Prensa Libre. Prensa Libre was being charged for allegedly using forged documents to implicate the Intelligence Service in harassment campaigns against opposition presidential candidates.
The lawyer for the journalists’ association, Beatriz Mejía Moria, said that the prosecutor who specializes in taxation and customs crimes, Hilda Valladares Alarcon, placed the case in the archives, as long as police: “do not find new evidence that proves the press men have committed a crime.”
The charges against the members of Prensa Libre date back to September 1999, when the CSJM accused them of using forged documents to implicate the Intelligence Service of the Army (SIE) in a campaign of persecution and harassment against Alberto Andrade and Luis Castañeda Lossio.
According to a summary investigation carried out in the CSJM, documents entitled “Plans of Political Operation” which were released to the public by the group of journalists on 25 August 1999, “Are not authentic and have been forged.” Based on this finding, the former president of the military authority, Oscar Granthon Stagnar, denounced the case to the National Elections Jury (JNE) and to the Public Ministry as alleged crimes against legal authorities who authenticate documents and the legal process, an offense against the State.
Military sources would not say if the resolution of prosecutor Valladares Alarcon would be appealed. Representatives of Prensa Libre, meanwhile, argue that the report they broadcasted with the help of Congressman Anel Townsend (Somos Perú) was truthful and showed the military authorities’ violations of their “rights to freedom of expression and work.”
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