Global Courant 2023-05-17 04:31:55
Former captain Rubén García said that when he found out the ages of the victims he should have “shot himself in the head.” The prosecutor and the complaint requested a life sentence for the defendants.
The oral trial against four police officers for the “Monte Massacre” entered its final stage. This Tuesday at the hearing that is being held in the Courts of La Plata, the latest presentations of the agents accused of killing the four boys and also the arguments of the parties were heard.
The definition will remain at the discretion of a popular jury. Twelve citizens who do not know about Law must determine if they consider that the defendants were responsible or innocent of the crime.
Prosecutor Mariano Sibuet asked the popular jury to consider the four Buenos Aires police officers “guilty”. “They showed contempt for the lives of the victims and each one of them made an essential contribution” to bring about the fatal outcome.
In the early morning of May 19, 2019, the Fiat 147 in which Danilo Sansone (13), Gonzalo Domínguez (14), Aníbal Suárez (22), Camila López (22) and Rocío Quagliariello, then 13 years old, collided against the trailer of a truck stopped in the Route 3 collector after a patrol tried to stop it. The only survivor was Rocío, who is now 17 years old.
The four agents tried for the San Miguel del Monte Massacre.
It was after a police chase in which –according to what was reported in the trial– the policemen shot him “for no apparent reason” and followed them with two patrol cars for almost 2,000 meters in that town.
Sibuet required that police officers Mariano Ibañez, Manuel Monreal, Rubén Alberto García and Leandro Ecilape be considered guilty. He maintains that they are responsible for “aggravated homicide due to abuse of function as a qualified member of the police forces for the use of firearms, and violation of the duties of a public official.”
“Jurors, when we first met, I told you about an appalling event. After all these days, we heard witnesses, we saw concrete evidence. We can affirm that that expectation did indeed occur, ”opened the prosecutor who summarized his vision of the facts.
On the same day, the lawyers of the families of the victims intervened. They agreed with the tax requirement. After describing what happened that night, they assessed that it was a “brutal homicide” and an “unjustified killing.”
Danilo Sansone’s father and a request for justice for the four fatalities and the survivor of the massacre. Photo Mauricio Nievas
Before these allegations, the former captain García asked to testify before the jury. He said that upon learning the ages of the victims he assessed that “he should have shot himself in the head.” He maintained that he is “a lover of human rights” and not a murderer, while the former officer Ecilape affirmed that the persecution was “justified”. He considered the result of that episode an “accident”.
Agents Ibáñez and Monreal also decided to present their position before the jury and the judge who is conducting the process, Carolina Crispiani. “We didn’t want to hurt anyone,” they said. Monreal, 22, said that “they came upon us. It had been a year since he had graduated from the academy. I regret what happened,” she said.
They also exposed the lawyers who defend the police officers. Lawyer María Celeste Baqué assessed that the tragic end was the result of an “irresponsible and negligent action by Aníbal (the driver and owner of the Fiat). The agents followed up calmly, with identified, uniformed mobiles, using the sirens. However, Aníbal knew what a police procedure was and did not stop. He fled consciously and voluntarily,” said the lawyer.
The lawyers believe that Suárez did not want to stop at the police request because they were going to hijack his car. And on several occasions they said that the driver was “over drunk.”
Tuesday’s was the largest hearing. It ended after 8:00 p.m., almost 10 hours after it started. On Wednesday the 17th, the jury must debate and decide whether it considers the police officers innocent or guilty. And then the judge who intervenes will establish -in case of guilt- the eventual amount of the sentence that will correspond to them.
The Silver. correspondent
MG
