05/30/2020 - 14:58
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The left-wing militant Sebastián Rodrigo Romero was detained in the last hours in Uruguay after spending more than two years on the run from Argentine justice for shooting with a homemade mortar during the protests, mobilizations that took place in front of the National Congress in December 2018.
His capture took place in a field in the Chuy area , in the northeast of the neighboring country, as part of a joint procedure between Interpol, the Uruguayan police and the Argentine Federal Police.
According to sources of the investigation to Clarín , the arrest occurred in the morning. Now, efforts will begin to finalize his extradition and to be tried by the Argentine Justice.
Romero fled shortly after participating in a violent mobilization to Congress, during the debate on the pension reform. His actions were recorded with journalistic coverage, both in video and in photographs.
Sebastián Romero during the violent protests of 2018. (Photo: Emmanuel Fernández).
And one of those images, in which he is seen shooting a sort of bazooka hunt, was soon viralized by social networks and Romero became known as the " Fat Mortar ".
In February 2018, an international arrest warrant was activated and a reward set to try to catch him.
In March 2018, through a letter published on the social network Twitter, he defined himself as a politically persecuted person and expressed: "We have to remove Macri as we removed De La Rúa in 2001"
Chamber I of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, made up of judges Gustavo Hornos, Carlos Mahiques and Ana María Figueroa, rejected an extraordinary appeal presented by the defense of Romero, who had previously tried to bring the matter to the highest criminal court.
The Cassation had previously declared that the recourse with which Romero's lawyers had tried to challenge the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber's decision rejecting the exemption from prison, which had also been denied by the judge of first instance, was inadmissible.
