Magistrate Carmen Rodríguez-Mendel Nieto of the Investigating Court No. 51 of Madrid rejected the accusation sent against Mario Vargas Llosa against Mario Vargas Llosa for requesting that fair elections be held in Peru for alleged crimes against national integrity, sedition, conspiracy to rebellion, slanderous denunciation and malfeasance.
After the presidential elections in Peru, the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, requested that the results be investigated so that the process is not contaminated by any doubt. After expressing his opinion after the elections where Pedro Castillo was elected president; the citizen Manuel Benjamín Ruiz Briones denounced Vargas Llosa before the Prosecutor's Office and the prosecutor Robert Percca opened the case, which was later sent to Spain by the International Cooperation Prosecutor, Rocio Gala.
The complaint filed by Manuel Benjamín Ruiz Briones and the Civil Association for the Defense of the Interests of La Libertad did not present any evidence and included 26 people, in addition to Vargas Llosa, his eldest son, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, the former presidential candidates, Keiko Sofía Fujimori, Rafael López Aliaga, César Acuña, Louedes Flores Nano; businessmen like Dionisio Romero, congressmen and reality show artists like Alejandra Baigorria and Mario Hart.
In Judge Rodríguez-Mendel's brief, to which ABC had access, it is stated that: "It is not even minimally specified what specific expression is attributed to the person against whom criminal proceedings have been opened in Peru, Mr. Mario Vargas. Llosa. It is not specified what day the events occurred, nor in what context, nor why it is considered that the truth was deliberately disregarded, nor on what evidence is it based to understand that there is a conspiracy with the rest of the people in front of whom has admitted the complaint.
It is also indicated that according to the doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights that «protects the freedom of expression of all citizens, especially in relation to expressions made within an electoral process. Thus, political discrepancy and its externalization cannot be criminally prosecuted, but must be understood as a manifestation of any democratic system.
"There is no indication of any crime that allows this judicial body to cooperate with the Peruvian authorities" and therefore, Judge Carmen Rodríguez-Mendel ordered that the process that the Prosecutor's Office led by Robert Percca against Mario Vargas Llosa be archived.
“The only complaint had no merit to reach a preliminary investigation. It is a specious, vague, indeterminate complaint that refers more to opinions of a political process, giving an opinion about an election is not a crime of sedition in any country in the world," Mario Vargas Llosa's lawyer, Enrique Ghersi, told ABC.
“The mere fact that prosecutor Percca opens a preliminary investigation is illegal. Second, that the international cooperation office led by a supreme prosecutor has processed it without qualifying it is very serious, because it depends on the nation's prosecutor. It is not conceivable that it is possible that the international cooperation office has not noticed the errors. And thirdly, that the Peruvian State has processed it," explained Ghersi.
«The resolution of the Spanish magistrate who files the case against Mario Vargas Llosa questions the quality of the rule of law in Peru and leaves it very badly off. It is an intimidation to anyone who thinks differently. What the prosecution has to do is file and stop making international papers, "concluded Ghersi.
It is not the first time that Mario Vargas Llosa has been denounced without evidence in Peru; In November 1984, Judge Hermenegildo Ventura Huayhua took him to testify in Ayacucho (southeast Peru) as president of the commission of a massacre of journalists in Uchuraccay and wanted to implicate him by pointing out that he was "covering up" the real culprits by pointing out that those who killed the eight journalists in 1983 were not the Armed Forces but the peasants of Uchuraccay.
Huayhua subjected Vargas Llosa to an unusual 15-hour questionnaire where he asked him about his "savings abroad" or if he was a follower of the "hedonistic philosophy." A stoic Vargas Llosa ended the interrogation, which he described as "vexatious." In August 1985, Judge Huayhua was suspended and the case against Vargas Llosa was closed.
