Natalia Iocco
08/29/2021 3:55 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 08/29/2021 3:55 PM
On a piece of paper, as if injustice could be listed, Gustavo Melmann (65) wrote down a score of things.
Melmann knew, by dint of 20 years of struggle, that
there is no time to cry when the one who kills has a
police
uniform
and that this information in time can be the key to the "fight with Justice" that will come later.
It was one day in 2008 that he called Leónidas Mateu (52), shortly after the body of his daughter, Mara, was found among a tamarisk in Santa Teresita, to tell him to "take care of the evidence."
Together they demanded that those rights be fulfilled, listed in two "little sheets."
He did the same when Manuel Iglesias (67) had to intervene in the investigation into the crime of his sister, also murdered in Miramar, but in 2011. Now the three make those calls or accompany other victims, they are united by pain and certainty :
"
It was the Police
.
"
Between January 1 and July 31, 2021 there were 155 femicides, 9 transfemicides and 13 linked femicides of men in the country, according to the NGO Casa del Encuentro.
Of that total, 17 of the crimes were committed by members of the security forces, adding to the 205 counted since 2008.
When gender violence and institutional violence intersect,
impunity and perversion exacerbate the pain.
Gustavo Melmann, Manuel Iglesias and Leónidas Mateu, along with other relatives of the victims.
They participate in "Trapped by Femicide", which brings together 200 people from all over the country.
Three stories, the same fight
Natalia Melmann was kidnapped, raped and killed on February 4, 2001. She was 15 years old and someone warned her father
not
to “
detach from her body
” because “
the Ratis had killed her
”.
Melmann, who did not know that being "
rati
" meant being a policeman, had to fight even to travel to the morgue guarding the body of his daughter.
As they would do with Mara Mateu (16) in Santa Teresita seven years later, they had strangled her with the laces of her shoes in an "orderly" and "controlled" scene.
Evidence was lost and evidence was stolen.
The same thing happened five years later when the victim was Laura Iglesias (53), a social worker from the Patronato de Liberados, in a place far from the center of Miramar.
Three women were victims of violence, abuse and femicide, long before Justice knew that these crimes had to be treated from another perspective.
But, in addition to brutality, they are united by methodology, a modality that - they denounce - was used by the Police in the Buenos Aires coastal corridor.
For none was justice complete.
Gustavo Melmann and the five DNAs
“My daughter was a young girl of only 15 years old who on February 4, 2001 was kidnapped by the Buenos Aires Police and taken to the outskirts of Miramar where they raped, tortured her, burned her with cigarettes and ended up strangling her with a cord. his left shoe ”, Melmann tells
Clarín
, as he so often told.
The crime of his daughter shocked Miramar, but also the country with massive marches and people demanding the truth.
It was this pressure that made it possible to identify some of those responsible.
Natalia Melmann was 15 years old.
“She was because she was in love with a young man named Maximiliano Mallol, who was a friend of an ex-convict named 'Gallo' Fernández and who finally handed her over to the police to rape her.
We had a trial in 2002, where Ricardo Suárez (58), Ricardo Anselmini (53) and Oscar Echenique (61) were sentenced to life imprisonment.
From that judgment it emerged that Ricardo Panadero and another person had to be investigated, of whom they found a DNA trace that is still unidentified, ”he synthesizes.
He, along with other relatives of the victims, formed "
Traversed by femicide
", a group of people who meet with the intention of providing counseling and accompanying other collateral victims of gender violence.
There are 200 families summoned in a non-governmental association that receives feedback from the containment and the expectation of generating public policies that allow the eradication of violence against women.
The trial by Natalia Melmann, in Mar del Plata.
Clarín Archive.
Mara Mateu and impunity
Mara Mateu was 16 years old when she was the victim of a sexual assault and murdered on March 24, 2008 in Santa Teresita.
They last saw her the night before, when the city was full of tourists.
He had gone out with his friends downtown, but did not return.
“At the Mar del Tuyú sub-police station they gave me the news that they found her among some tamarisks and nothing more than that.
From then on this ordeal began, this struggle.
Sometimes one says '
the fight with Justice
', when Justice has to be a contribution, a support.
However, those of us who are involved in this say it is a fight with Justice ”, Leonidas tries to describe those first days of despair.
VICTIM.
MARA SOFIA MATEU (16).
And he continues: "At that time I did not know anything, I did not understand anything about how Justice was handled, how everything was handled in general. The only thing I knew was that the last time I saw Mara was on the floor, in a bag black and nothing else ".
In the midst of that whirlpool, he received a call from Gustavo Melmann: “He approached me and brought me two leaves in a bar.
We sat down and he explained more or less what the situation was like, what was going to have to happen or live and how to deal with the cause.
They were in those two little sheets ”, he remembers and smiles, as if that paper had been a lifesaver.
For the crime, in 2011, Adrián Svitch and Diego Buzzo were convicted.
The main evidence was that their DNA was on the teenager's body.
But, from ties with Svitch to the Buenos Aires province Justice Ministry to a police officer who used Mara's phone, these were some of the obstacles to this "fight with Justice" that Leónidas describes.
Leónidas Mateu (left), with Carlos, Rosana Galliano's brother, in the march for Women's Day in 2018. Photo: Luciano Thieberger.
"A teacher, Alejandra Elichiribety, from there from Santa Teresita, had my daughter's cell phone. She is the sister of the police officer Waldemar Elichiribety, who was at the scene of the crime when she was ordered to be at the police station. She went to trial, but As there was not much evidence of the cover-up, they acquitted her. They sentenced Svitch and Buzzo to 35 years, the rest nothing.
It was not investigated,
"
Mara's father
tells
Clarín
, helplessly.
Leonidas, like Gustavo Melmann and Manuel Iglesias,
were asked to "settle" for the convictions obtained
.
The pressure to "secure" jail for the perpetrators prevented them from reaching the full truth they are still seeking.
"When you lack a child, you don't have much more to lose. For a raped girl or woman to appear, murdered with the shoelace, is rare. We are certain that the police were involved. We did not have enough evidence Nor did we have enough answers, "insists this man, who now works with the Municipality of the La Costa Party with other relatives of victims.
Neighbors of Santa Teresita, in the massive march for justice after the crime of Mara Mateu.
Clarín Archive.
Laura Iglesias and an outstanding debt
On May 29, 2013, Laura Iglesias left with her car.
He had been living on the outskirts of Miramar for two years and worked in the Patronato de Liberados of the province of Buenos Aires.
His job, as a social worker, was to visit, accompany and monitor people with home detention or early release benefits.
That day his car got stuck in the mud.
As she did not want to put off her tasks, she asked someone to drive her and later returned to get him.
That was the last time they saw her.
Laura Iglesias was a 53-year-old social worker.
The next day they found her body about 200 meters from the place where her car had been buried in the mud: they raped her and murdered her with the laces of her shoes.
In his hand rested a wooden paper envelope.
A position that - from a distance -
seemed too "orderly"
to his brother
.
Manuel speaks in a calm and firm tone.
He disarms when he remembers the trip - along with another of his sisters - in which he received the call that told him the worst news: Laura was dead.
Melmann also contacted him and that is how they recognized the similarities of the cases.
Again Miramar and again the same crime mechanics.
"We have seen a lot of irregularities, they never asked us for his computer to analyze it. There was a modification of the crime scene, it was armed," warns Manuel, along with Melmann and Mateu.
Manuel Iglesias, Laura's brother (53), raped and murdered in 2011 in Miramar.
Photo Facebook Crossed by Femicide.
Another point that worries the Iglesias family points to Laura's work in the Patronato de Liberados.
Is that, before being murdered, one of the policemen involved in Natalia Melmann's crime, Oscar Etchenique, had obtained temporary exits.
A colleague of Laura Iglesias was in charge of monitoring compliance, but Etchenique was not at home as she should.
That report earned him threats.
For this reason, the following control was carried out together with Laura.
One of the suspicions was that they had been confused when complying with those threats.
That line was never investigated.
The truth is that Esteban Cuello is the only one convicted of the crime.
They pointed him out for his history of sexual abuse and within 48 hours a DNA confirmed his participation.
"They never found her glasses or the item with which they beat her. The issue was to immediately imprison this boy, which I am certain that he was there and participated, but I could not assure that it was he who murdered my sister," speculates Manuel , still in doubt about what happened.
The area where Laura Iglesias was found murdered, in Miramar.
File
A phrase resonates in the stories of Gustavo, Leónidas and Manuel.
They questioned all three of their tenacity: they asked them to conform.
"
The attorney general told me:
'You
already have a condemned man, what more do you want?
" Recalls Manuel.
He is outraged at the indifference with which they attended the investigation and says: "At least for a portion of Justice it is not necessary for five femicides to fall, five criminals, for three to fall, they are already satisfied. If this is the Justice we want, We are fried. As a member of this society I want something very different. "
In the last ten years in Argentina there is an average of one femicide every 30 hours.
According to statistics from the Office of Domestic Violence of the Supreme Court, in 2018 alone there were 278. Most murders occur in the homes of the victims and are committed by partners or exes.
Where to call
Line 144
Care for women in situations of violence.
Line 137
Attention to Victims of Family Violence.
911 Emergencies
EMJ
