Mariano Gaik Aldrovandi
04/24/2020 - 17:13
- Clarín.com
- Police
It was a brutal crime in the midst of a riot. Federico Rodrigo Rey (23) was killed by three shots with lead bullets. His body was left lying for several hours on the roof of Penal Unit No. 23, while the official version claimed to establish that he had died after receiving a blow in a "fight between gangs of prisoners."
What happened on Wednesday in the Florencio Varela prison, in the southern suburbs, was a disaster. The protest for the benefits of early liberties and home prisons in the face of the coronavirus crisis led to a riot.
If the situation was of maximum tension, what turned it into an explosive cocktail was the repression of the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service (SPB).
The autopsy on Rey's body, which was serving a sentence for robbery, confirmed that firearms with lead bullets were used to defuse a protest in pavilions 2, 6 and 7, which consisted of climbing the roofs of a section of the prison. to make visible the claim for hygiene and safety measures. The claim began after the spread of Julián Arakaki (49), the first prisoner with coronavirus in the country.
The preliminary report made by the experts of the judicial morgue of Lomas de Zamora and to which Clarín agreed indicated that Rey had gunshot wounds to the skull, neck and chest. Three lead projectiles were extracted from his body "which due to their characteristics would correspond to a shotgun or similar".
"It can be inferred that taking into account the characteristics and distribution of these entry holes, not showing tattoos, smoke or burns, the firing distance would be far," indicates the preliminary autopsy report.
The lawyer for the victim's family, Juan Manuel Casolati, has no doubt that the shots were fired by SPB agents. " It was a riot . They shot a lot of times and Rey was shot three times," he told Clarín. And he added that there are several seriously injured, including two inmates who "lost an eye" and another detained "with eight shotgun wounds to the legs."
In addition to the leads, the experts found a rubber bullet among the victim's clothes. His body also detected "multiple injuries compatible" with this type of ammunition.
Federico Rey (23), the prisoner who died in Unit 23 of Florencio Varela. The detainees report that the guards killed him.
Those shells were sent for analysis on ballistic expertise. That could be the first step on a long and complicated road: determining which weapon each shot came from and identifying the shooter (s).
Sources of the case pointed out to this newspaper that there are more elements that would help to solve that question. What is clear so far is that the procedure was against the negotiation protocol, which was applied in other protests, such as that of the Melchor Romero prison on Tuesday.
The panorama in the Varela prison is critical. The Provincial Commission for Memory (CPM) denounced that the "overcrowding situation reaches 200%" . It does not escape the reality of the Buenos Aires prison system, which is in one of its worst moments. It houses 44,000 detainees when it has a capacity of 29,000, according to official data.
After Florencio Varela's UP 23 riot, the SPB headed the prison's top.
They are confinement spaces for those who committed a crime to serve a sentence and access tools that allow them to re-socialize. But the conditions are very poor.
After the riot followed by death in the Varela prison, the SPB leadership ordered the release of the prison director, the three deputy directors and the head of the Surveillance and Treatment section . While the administrative summary is proceeding to determine the responsibilities of the agents in the incidents, prison sources reported.
The SPB also made available to the prosecutor Roxana Giménez, from UFI No. 9 in Quilmes, "all the shotguns and the shells served kidnapped" after the incidents that ended with the death of Rey and 40 inmates and 15 wounded officers.
An inmate injured in the legs in Unit 23 of Florencio Varela.
“We are going to advance the investigation to the final consequences. The use of lead shells is not allowed inside prisons. It is used in perimeter security, only in extreme cases and to repel external aggressions ”, stated the head of the SPB, Xavier Areses.
Rey's crime has similar characteristics to that of José Mario Candia (22), the prisoner assassinated in Penal Unit No. 1 in Corrientes, last Tuesday. Candia was shot in one of her armpits while participating in the incidents in that prison, when the prison guards and the provincial police tried to deactivate a hunger strike.
But the first version made by the Corrientes authorities was also that of "a fight between prisoners". And for that they spread a photo of Candia's body with a stab in the chest. The suspicion is that this wound was caused after the shot, to mount the alibi with the hoot.
LM