Argentine lawyer Agostina Páez, who is currently detained in Brazil for making racist gestures, said today that she is 'dead with fear'. This came after a Brazilian judge issued a warrant for her arrest. The 29-year-old woman had her passport confiscated and an electronic ankle bracelet put on. She has already been notified of her legal situation, being accused of the gestures she made to a group of Brazilians at a bar in Ipanema on January 14. For this crime, she faces a sentence of two to five years in prison. In a video released on Thursday, Páez stated that 'all her rights are being violated', considering that at all times she showed her willingness to cooperate with the Brazilian authorities, but at the same time warned that she is 'dead with fear'. 'I need help. I'm afraid of being harmed by making this video, that my rights will be even more violated. I can't speak about the facts, I can only say that there is a context that is in the case and that is not taken into account just to harm me. I hope everything becomes clear,' she added. According to the Argentine agency Noticias Argentinas, her reaction is said to have been in response to a series of obscene jokes by a group of men who were in the bar. Meanwhile, the 37th Criminal Court stated in the document ordering the detention that 'although precautionary measures other than imprisonment, including electronic surveillance, have been imposed, these are not sufficient to neutralize the existing procedural risk'. The prosecution, for its part, argued that the woman's behavior reinforces the need for imprisonment, since 'even after being warned by more than one official that her conduct constituted a crime in Brazil, the accused persisted in the racial crimes, even extending them to the public space'.
