The Justice of Neuquén and the whole country is in mourning.
Eugenio Krom (73)
, the
judge in the Omar Carrasco case
, the soldier beaten to death in the Zapala barracks by second lieutenant Ignacio Canevaro and former soldiers Cristian Suárez and Víctor Salazar, who marked Argentine society and for which the Carlos Menem
's government
eliminated the Compulsory Military Service
.
In 1991, Eugenio Krom was appointed as the first federal judge in Zapala, 190 kilometers west of the provincial capital.
From 1994 to 2018 he was part of the Federal Oral Court of Neuquén and in 2008 he was a member of the court that initiated the first trial for crimes of the last dictatorship in that province.
Shortly after being appointed federal judge, he had to deal with a controversial cause that crossed Argentine society.
The murder of the conscript Omar Carrasco with blows and the concealment of the body by the Army for a month.
Soldier Omar Carrasco was assassinated in the Zapala barracks in March 1994. Photo: Claudio Fanchi
Omar Carrasco, 19 years old, was assassinated on March 6, 1994, only 3 days after he was incorporated into a Zapala barracks.
He was first declared a deserter, but a month later his body appeared within the same regiment.
The case meant the end of compulsory military service in Argentina.
Carrasco was shy, he had never left the city of Cutral-Có, where he had grown up in Neuquén.
He was the eldest of four siblings, very religious (evangelist) and he smiled when he was challenged.
His colleagues said that Second Lieutenant Ignacio Canevaro "had him between his eyes" because he was slow to carry out his orders.
The early morning of March 6 he had to do "imaginary" - be on call - but he said his back hurt.
The last time they saw him was during that day's nap, when they ordered him to go to the outside bathroom to see if any of his classmates were there smoking.
For the Court that sentenced them, in that bathroom the "old soldiers" Víctor Salazar and Cristian Suárez beat him on Canevaro's orders and caused internal bleeding that caused him a quick death.
General Martin Balza met with the parents of soldier Omar Carrasco in Zapala.
The judges believe that Canevaro then ordered "live movements" for the entire battery to clear the place, that he left Salazar looking after the block and then returned to make sure the bathroom was clean and move the body.
Sebastiana and Francisco, Omar Carrasco's parents, went to visit him two weeks after he entered the Army and the military told them that Omar had deserted, that he had vanished from the barracks.
They never believed that version.
They knew their son too well.
On April 6, the corpse of the soldier was found inside the military premises.
They had beaten him viciously, on the floor.
A kick broke his ribs and punctured a lung.
The eye was bruised so deep it was presumed to have been made with a shovel.
He died from internal bleeding, alone.
In January 1996, the Federal Oral Court of Neuquén sentenced second lieutenant Ignacio Canevaro to 15 years in prison and former soldiers Cristian Suárez and Víctor Salazar to 10 years, as perpetrators of simple homicide.
Sebastiana, the mother of soldier Omar Carrasco.
In that same sentence it was established that there was a cover-up maneuver on the part of military chiefs, with which a new investigation was started that is now known as
the Carrasco II case
.
In this case, nine soldiers and one soldier were prosecuted.
What happened to the convicts and Carlos Menem's reaction
The trial for the crime began in November 1995. On January 31, 1996, the two soldiers—who were 25 years old at the time—and Second Lieutenant Canevaro were convicted as perpetrators of the murder.
Former second lieutenant Ignacio Rodrigo Canevaro, sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of conscript Omar Carrasco, was released on probation after serving two thirds of his sentence in February 2004. The benefit was granted by the Federal Oral Court of Neuquén, the The same person who had handed down a sentence in January 1996.
Second Lieutenant Ignacio Canevaro was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
As explained by the prosecutor Manuel de Reyes Balboa at the time to
Clarín
, Canevaro, who was serving his sentence in the Ezeiza prison, was in a position to request his release a month before the 10th anniversary of the crime (March 6, 1994 ) because the months that he was in pretrial detention were counted as 2 for 1.
The official accepted the request, because Canevaro "had very good conduct" in prison, where he served a large part of his sentence with a "vip" regime.
The three convicted studied in prison.
The soldiers finished high school, and Canevaro graduated as a lawyer
Due to the violent crime in the 161 Artillery Group of Zapala, the then President Carlos Menem, who had first minimized the crime, in August 1994, five months later signed the decree that made compulsory military service disappear.
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