Virginia Messi
02/20/2021 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 02/20/2021 6:01 AM
At dawn on July 9, 2013, one of the strangest, darkest and most complex police episodes of recent decades occurred: a "step" from the Halcón Group of the Buenos Aires Police broke into the house of SIDE agent Pedro "Lauchón" Viale (59) cornered him in the bathroom while he was shooting at them and killed him with 11 shots.
"Chapa, chapa," Viale shouted several times - who was the right hand of the then General Director of Operations of the SIDE, Jaime Stiuso - thus demanding that the uniformed men identify themselves.
That morning of a national holiday, the federal judge of Tres de Febrero Juan Manuel Culotta had ordered 18 raids in the framework of a drug trafficking case.
Wiretaps taken from a Buenos Aires police led to Viale.
According to the official version, from that point on his house in La Reja, Moreno's party, entered the list of places to be searched and, his name, on the arrest warrants.
Culotta did not order that it be specifically the Halcón Group, that was decided by the Superintendency of Investigations of Illicit Drugs in charge of a man of extreme confidence of the then head of the Buenos Aires, Raúl Matzkin.
It is in this decision to send the specialized group at dawn and at the very origin of the Culotta cause, where the spy's family relies, through his lawyer, Santiago Blanco Bermúdez, in sustaining a disturbing hypothesis.
Former SIDE agent Pedro "Lauchón" Viale.
The short version: that Viale was chosen by the leadership of the Police of the province of Buenos Aires to send a message to Stiuso, in revenge for the help that the SIDE gave the Federal Police to arrest the drug trafficker Miguel Ángel "Mameluco" Villalba in August 2011, whom they wanted as their own prey.
"It is so evident that it was a settling of accounts that even the AFI itself decided to assume the role of complainant in this intelligence process that it was not a mere procedural error but rather a direct attack on an agent. ", says the brief by which Blanco Bermúdez and his partner Julián Subías recently requested that part of the file be brought to trial.
In the last few days, the federal judge of Morón Martín Ramos received three requests for elevation to trial in the same case, all three targeting two of the policemen who, according to their expertise, were the perpetrators of the shots that killed "Lauchón".
They are officer
Gustavo Ernesto Martinez (44) and Sergeant Pedro Alegre (34)
, who will arrive accused of "qualified homicide for abuse in the use of their functions", a very serious crime because they were processed six years ago with a confirmation of Chamber in 2015.
To the request of elevation in the opinion of the Viale family lawyers, the AFI (Federal Intelligence Agency, former SIDE) was added as the second complainant to that of the federal prosecutor Santiago Marquevich.
Luciano Viale and the holes of the Grupo Halcón projectiles in the walls of his house.
Photo Clarín Archive
Each one has its own peculiarity, but the three agree that the two policemen go to trial because their weapons gave off the shots that hit the body of "Lauchón" Viale: one in the face, six in the thorax, three in the left arm and one on the hip on the right side.
For Blanco Bermúdez, the rest of the "echelon" and the bosses of the Buenos Aires department responsible for the operation must be prosecuted, but so far, by decision of the Chamber, they have "lack of merit."
Reckoning
"A line of investigation has been opened regarding the reasons that led the Police of the Province of Buenos Aires to act in the manner in which it was done. Various officials of today's AFI (former SIDE) gave their testimony referring to a kind of reckoning for the work that Viale had in a previous operation, "says the presentation of the complaint.
Although only Blanco Bermúdez's request clearly speaks of a "reckoning," the opinion of the federal prosecutor Santiago Marquevich also supports the need to exhaust this hypothesis.
"Likewise, it should be taken into account that, from the testimonial statements made by officials of the-then- Intelligence Secretariat under the National Executive Power, data emerge
linking the death of Viale with a possible reprisal by officials of the Police of the province of Buenos Aires
towards his person or to the referred organization, which would be motivated by his intervention in drug trafficking cases, "the prosecutor points out at the end of his letter.
In front of the house of Rocha Blaquier 1502, Moreno, where "Lauchon" Viale was killed.
Photo Emiliana Miguelez
And it adds: "Although evidence measures were carried out to verify this hypothesis and for the moment not enough elements have been incorporated to fully corroborate such circumstances, this Public Prosecutor's Office considers that given the complexity of the case and the seriousness of the facts Described there, the extraction of testimonies required by this part will also allow to continue deepening and deepening the investigation in this regard. "
Heir to the character of the complainant of the intelligence agency in this file, the current AFI intervener, Cristina Caamaño, complied with the formalities in a case that has nothing to do with her management.
Through the lawyer Augusto Martins,
Caamaño also requested the elevation of the two policemen from Grupo Halcón.
But in the four pages of the brief requirement, only the bare minimum is related, the facts.
Clearly these are no longer the times when Jaime Stiuso had the lollipop for the stick.
GL
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