The Buenos Aires city legislator is currently under indictment for alleged incitement to violence and discriminatory acts
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Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas decided to send Buenos Aires City legislator Vanina Biasi, from the Workers' Party, to oral trial. She is currently indicted for alleged incitement to violence and discriminatory acts. The judicial decision is linked to a series of posts made by the deputy on the social network X, which were reported for their antisemitic content.
The ruling puts an end to the investigation stage and authorizes the start of the oral proceedings, after Rafecas comprehensively analyzed the messages disseminated by the political leader.
In his decision, the magistrate maintained that this analysis shows that Biasi "encouraged a discourse that challenges the Jewish community as a whole, attributing criminal and dehumanizing behavior to it." According to the judge, the statements were not limited to political criticism, but involved a generalization toward a specific religious group.
La comunista Vanina Biasi.
Rafecas also referred to the medium used for disseminating the messages. In this regard, he emphasized that using the social network X, "because of its logic of immediate dissemination and indeterminate reach, increases the risk of spreading hate speech." With that argument, the judge concluded the investigative phase and ordered the case to be sent to the oral trial stage.
Vanina Biasi will be tried as the alleged perpetrator of the crime of "incitement to discrimination," provided for in Article 3 of Law 23.592. The indictment had already been confirmed by the Buenos Aires Federal Court of Appeals and, subsequently, an appeal filed by the defense was dismissed by the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation.
The regulation in question establishes prison sentences ranging from one month to three years for those who "encourage or incite persecution or hatred against a person or groups of people on racial or religious grounds."
The trial will be held before a single-judge court and will be presided over by federal judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi, who was selected by lot in the federal courts of Retiro. This way, he will be responsible for conducting the oral and public proceedings and for issuing a verdict once the process is completed.
La comunista Vanina Biasi.
The case
The investigation was initiated following a complaint filed by federal prosecutor Carlos Stornelli and included the private prosecution of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA). In that context, Rafecas questioned and indicted the city legislator for "encouraging or inciting hatred against a group of people — the Jewish community — through public statements on social networks."
During the investigative stage, a total of eight posts made between November 27, 2023, and January 29, 2024, were analyzed, all of them disseminated from the deputy's verified account on the social network X, identified as @vaninabiasi. According to the case file, those messages were considered relevant for assessing the possible configuration of the alleged crime.
Among the posts challenged by the justice system are statements such as: "The Zionist state is Nazi in its practices and its ideology," "Zionism is genocide. Zionism is apartheid," and "Zionist Nazis need to destroy UNRWA's humanitarian aid." These phrases were included in the judicial analysis that led to the decision to send the case to trial.
In his ruling, Rafecas warned that the messages posted by Biasi on her X account "would encourage or incite persecution or hatred against the Jewish community, going beyond the bounds of constitutionally protected freedom of expression." That criterion was central to justifying the continuation of the criminal proceedings and the holding of the oral trial.
