The two defamation cases brought by Finland's Speaker of Parliament and presidential candidate Jussi Halla-aho (Finns) have not been prioritised over other investigations, Finnish police have said in a statement.
Halla-aho reported Ilkka Kivi to the police in November after a social media post by the comedian in which Halla-aho was described as a fascist.
He filed a second complaint in December, this time against Aino Tuominen, a Green Party deputy city councillor in Helsinki.
The pace at which the two cases have proceeded from the filing of the reports to the suspects being questioned has led some people on social media to question if Halla-aho's complaints were receiving special treatment because of his position as a prominent politician. Similar cases, some have noted, proceed at a much slower pace.
However, a police spokesperson denied that the cases have been prioritised.
"Unlike other similar cases, the case has not been prioritised," Detective Inspector Juha-Matti Suominen wrote in an emailed reply to Yle's questions.
He added that defamation investigations will in future be carried out by a dedicated unit created in response to criticism over the slow pace of defamation investigations.
The unit will be led by Suominen.
Clear-cut cases will be dealt with as quickly as possible, Suominen noted, while preliminary investigations will be launched into the more difficult cases.
The relatively rapid investigative pace in the Halla-aho cases are explained by this new unit's way of working, Suominen said, adding further that investigations can still take a long time even if interviews are carried out relatively early in the preliminary probe.
