Global Courant 2023-04-29 21:47:57
The head of the Departmental Directorate of Investigations (DDI) Quilmes, accused of covering up the crime against Lautaro Morello and the disappearance of Lucas Escalante last December in Florencio Varela, pleaded “not guilty” and assured: “I did not facilitate or collaborate in evading, but I carried out tasks tending to the identification and detention”.
This is Chief Commissioner Luis Alberto Zaracho, who will continue to be detained after the prosecutor in the case, Daniel Ichazo, charged him with the crime of “covering up qualified because the crime is especially serious and because of his status as a public official.”
“I neither facilitated nor collaborated in evading, but I carried out tasks tending to the identification and arrest. I also did not fail in my duties as a public official,” said the now former head of the DDI Quilmes.
Judicial sources reported that Zaracho said that he “never” distorted the facts in which he participated as an investigator, since every time he carried out any procedure in the case, he did it “in consultation with the prosecutor (Mariana) Dongiovanni,” who was the first prosecutor who had the file but was later displaced.
Lautaro Morello was found murdered on the side of the Buen Ayre highway under construction, in Guernica
It is that, according to the accusation, the police chief arrested on Thursday helped the two suspects to evade the investigation by not preserving the scene of a search at the house of a major commissioner linked to both defendants and also by communicating with that cash prior to take statements from the same defendants.
Technically, prosecutor Ichazo attributed two events to him: one, which occurred on December 12 (three days after the disappearance of Lautaro and Lucas) and the other between the 14th and 15th of that same month, when police officers Cristian and Maximiliano Centurión they had not yet been charged or arrested.
What’s more, Lautaro’s body was found on December 15, although his identity was only confirmed the next day.
Lucas Escalante was driving a blue BMW and disappeared along with Lautaro Morello.
According to the prosecution, in the first of the charges against him, the head of the DDI, “already being aware of the presence of the victims at Cristian Centurión’s home, maintained communications with Francisco Centurión, father and uncle respectively of the defendants, prior to taking testimonial statements” from Cristian and Maximiliano, “trying with said statements to distort the course of the investigation and hinder it” while the investigation was in charge.
While, in the second episode, Zaracho participated in a raid on the home of Francisco Centurión ordered by the then prosecutor Dongiovanni, and they did not comply with the directives since they had to continue with the procedure throughout the 14th and, according to Ichazo, “they handed him over the house” to the chief commissioner and they just took it back on the 15th at 8.53 “without having inspected the entire property.”
In addition, Zaracho was accompanied in that search by the policeman Sergio Argañaraz, also detained for concealment; and both, as “public officials” were “obligated to preserve the place and continue the procedures ordered.”
The blue BMW in which Lucas Escalante went to look for his friend Lautaro Morello in Florencio Varela.
For Ichazo, in this way, Zaracho and Argañaraz helped “the perpetrators and participants to hide, alter and make disappear traces, evidence and instruments of the crime executed.”
However, regarding the raid on December 14 and 15, Zaracho stated that “he was in charge of Argañaraz with personnel under his charge.”
“While my staff and I fulfilled the function of perimeter keeping me out of the procedure that was carried out, for which I want to clarify that there was a group of Scientific Police assigned to Special Cases, who carried out the expert work of the place”, he assured .
This defendant was arrested on Thursday by members of the Homicide Division of the Federal Police (PFA) at the headquarters of the same DDI that he directed, at 1532 Corrientes and Martín Rodríguez streets, in Quilmes Oeste.
In turn, sources from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Security indicated that in this situation Zaracho was “disaffected” from his duties.
Meanwhile, Cristian and Maximiliano Centurión are being prosecuted with preventive detention for the “doubly aggravated homicide due to treachery and cruelty” of Morello.
Another policeman, Ramiro Yair Forchinito, who worked in an area integrated with Interpol, and was the right hand of Commissioner Centurión, was also imprisoned for “false testimony,” but has already regained his freedom.
Lautaro and Lucas, disappeared in Florencio Varela: the case
Lucas was last seen on Friday, December 9, in the town of Bosques, Florencio Varela’s match, when he went to look for Lautaro to go out to celebrate the victory of the Argentine National Team against the Netherlands in the semifinals of the World Cup in Qatar on board of a BMW car, which the next day appeared burned.
Morello’s body was found around 9:30 p.m. on Thursday the 15th next to the Buen Ayre highway under construction, in Guernica, President Perón’s party, lying face down, “semi-calcined and in an advanced state of decomposition” and, according to the autopsy , death was caused by “mechanical asphyxia”.
According to the investigation, the last destination in which it was accredited that Lucas and Lautaro were was the country house of the chief commissioner Centurion, in the town of Bosques.
A few days ago, at the request of the prosecutor Ichazo, a search was carried out in that country house in which traces of blood and remains of burned elements were found, which are now being analyzed.
The Centurión were arrested after the analysis of security cameras and cell phone antennas, since in a recording of a Florencio Varela service station Cristian is seen around 0.30 on December 10 loading gasoline in a white drum that It is suspected that it could have been used to incinerate Lucas’s car and Lautaro’s body.
One of the hypotheses that was investigated was that the two defendants arrested in the case offered the victims free gasoline vouchers as a method to attract them, and as a result of that suspicion, a series of incriminating audios were incorporated.
DB
