Mauro Aguilar
03/14/2021 4:45 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 03/14/2021 4:46 PM
"It is time for them to give us back the right to be able to go to work, study and be on the streets without fear of being robbed or killed."
The phrase does not belong to a neighbor jaded by insecurity, the occasional victim of a robbery or a fiery protester.
The words are part of an institutional speech, the one offered by the mayor of Rosario, Pablo Javkin, at the opening of ordinary sessions of the local Deliberative Council.
It was ten days ago.
It could have been last year or in 2013, when the escalation of homicides in the city due to
drug violence
climbed to intolerable limits.
A few days after that speech, the same one that neighbors desperately repeat in each neighborhood, the numbers once again show the depth of the problem:
in the first thirteen days of March, thirteen murders were registered.
At the rate of one per day.
“We are a city of patient people, but everything has a limit.
Lots of bullets, lots of blood.
We need them to take care of us more
”, implored Javkin in front of the councilors.
It was a message addressed to the population, but also to the authorities of the Province and the Nation to expand the presence of agents in the streets.
Attack against lawyer Ariel Zeballos (52).
Photo Juan José García.
Last Friday there was another brutal display of the impunity with which hitmen move to kill adversaries and innocents.
Five people were gunned down in three different attacks.
Five others were injured.
There are 49 the total so far this year.
The violence that exists in the city of Rosario had a new bloody chapter on Saturday night, with the shooting attack against a well-known criminal lawyer who was investigated in a case for smuggling ephedrine and defended members related to the drug gang. "The monkeys".
Ariel Zeballos, 52, was approached by two hitmen who were mobilizing on a motorcycle and shot when he was detained on the beach of a service station, aboard a black Mercedes Benz.
The episode occurred at around 7.30pm on Saturday, at an outlet of the Axion firm located in Baigorria and Camino de los Granaderos, near the “El Torito” children's soccer club.
Zeballos was admitted in serious condition to the Eva Perón hospital, in the town of Granadero Baigorria.
There he was operated on and he
was admitted to intensive care, in an induced coma
.
The mayor of Rosario, Pablo Javkin.
Photo: JUAN JOSE GARCIA.
According to the first information, the hitmen
fired about twenty shots
.
Six hit the lawyer's chest and legs.
In the body and the glass of the car, on the driver's side, another nine were counted.
At the scene of the incident, 15 served pods were kidnapped and two deformed leads were seized inside the car.
The motivations for the attack are being investigated.
Investigators hope that the images from the station's cameras will allow progress in the identification of the hitmen.
The lawyer is a recognized professional in the local jurisdiction and participated in some resounding events.
In 2009 he was arrested in the case for which Mario Segovia, the so-called “King of Ephedrine”, was convicted.
Mario Segovia, better known as "the king of ephedrine", in court.
Photo: Gustavo Amarelle / Télam.
Zeballos was investigated for participating in the money laundering of the group that smuggled ephedrine and pseudoephedrine to Mexico.
He was detained for a little over a month, but was finally released from the accusations. In addition, he defended the brothers Ezequiel “Parasite” Fernández and José “Grasita” Fernández, whom he related to Ariel “Guille” Cantero, leader of the band. narco "Los Monos".
The Fernández brothers were murdered in a triple crime that occurred on April 19, 2018, in Granadero Baigorria.
"Parasite" participated in a plan hatched from prison by Cantero to kidnap drug rivals and demand large sums of money in exchange for their release.
Following “Guille's” orders, Fernández kidnapped a young man on the street, but a while later he realized that he had made a mistake: he was a metal worker, the son of a butcher, so they decided to release him.
"Parasite" was identified in different investigations as one of the hitmen of the fearsome drug gang.
"I always ask for my clients to come forward and comply with the law," recalled Zeballos in dialogue with
Clarín
in 2018, when reviewing the story of "Parasite" and the escape he starred in while serving a sentence for a homicide and enjoyed temporary exits for go to work.
Zeballos is also known for being the father of the prosecutor Ramiro González Raggio, who works in the Sexual Offenses area of the Public Prosecutor's Office (MPA).
Urban violence settled in Rosario in recent years, due to the growth of the drug business.
In 2013, 271 homicides were committed, the highest number ever.
Rosario suffers a crisis of violence.
Photo Emmanuel Fernández.
Some gangs dismembered or reconverted with the death or arrest of their leaders - this is the case of the Cantero, Esteban Alvarado, the Camino, the Funes or Luis Medina - but the problem seemed to spread as they gained ground. the second or third lines of those groups or when new players emerge.
Last year, 56.8% of the homicides that occurred in Santa Fe occurred in Gran Rosario.
There were 212 out of a total of 373, with a rate per 100,000 inhabitants of 16.42 murders, according to data from the Public Security Observatory.
It was the highest figure in the last five years, after the decline that occurred after the 2013 peak.
In 2020 eight out of ten people killed were attacked with firearms.
The ease with which gangs and criminals access weapons also explains the phenomenon of violence.
Last year, El Gran Rosario had 871 gunshot wounds, a rate of 72.45 per 100,000 inhabitants.
47.2% of the homicides that occurred last year were related to illegal economies and criminal organizations, 29.2% were due to interpersonal conflicts and 7.5% were due to theft.
Numbers of a bloody, widespread, daily reality and, for the residents of multiple neighborhoods of the city, definitely intolerable.
EMJ
Look also
"Parasite", the fearsome hitman from Los Monos who ended up under a hail of bullets
Third sentence for a Los Monos boss: he has already accumulated 47 years
