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Argentina remembers José Luis Cabezas 25 years after his murder

2022-01-25T22:51:31.205Z


The murder of the photojournalist is the worst attack on press freedom in Argentina and the claim for the crime that shocked the country is still alive


In Argentina they remember the murder of the reporter José Luis Cabezas 6:38

(CNN Spanish) --

This January 25 marks the 25th anniversary of the kidnapping and murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas.

In Argentina, his family, friends and colleagues remember him with acts and tributes.

It is considered the worst attack against press freedom since the return to democracy in the country, in 1983. A crime that shocked the country and a claim that is still alive despite the fact that the Justice sentenced eight people to long prison terms.


Photojournalist José Luis Cabezas was kidnapped in the early hours of January 25, 1997 at the door of his house in Pinamar, a seaside resort on the Atlantic coast, province of Buenos Aires.

Cabezas was covering the summer season with the team from the Noticias Magazine.

According to the judicial investigation, he was beaten and taken to a cellar, 30 kilometers away, where he was handcuffed and shot in the head.

They finished him off with a second shot.

His body was found inside the car, charred by fire.

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The photo of the "enigmatic" businessman

The photographer had joined Noticias in 1989. The magazine was an emblematic publication of the 1990s. With his camera and his clinical eye, he portrayed personalities from politics, entertainment, culture, business and fashion.

But his most iconic work are the photos he took in February 1996 of businessman Alfredo Yabrán, at the time one of the most powerful men in Argentina, but whose face was still an enigma for the public.

The journalist Gabriel Michi was the last companion of Cabezas in the coverage of the summer seasons of 1996 and 1997. “Yabrán was a very powerful businessman, but he was also very enigmatic because nobody knew his face.

Before José Luis managed to expose his face with his camera, Yabrán had said that taking a picture of him was like shooting him in the forehead and that not even the intelligence services had images of him," Michi said in dialogue with CNN. .

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“Noticias was the medium that has investigated this character the most, who was a businessman who managed all the sensitive areas from the shadows: the entrance and exit of the country through the airports, the bonded warehouse companies, the mail companies, also of the internal circulation, the loading and unloading companies of the planes”, assured Michi.

"A businessman whose face nobody knew, but in the circles of power everyone owed him favors or was very afraid of him," he added.

That summer of 1996, with his Nikon f4 camera, Cabezas photographed the businessman while he was walking on the sand in Pinamar with his wife.

Those images were not the result of chance, but of a long investigative work by Cabezas and Michi and other journalists and photojournalists of the magazine.

Noticias investigated Yabrán's businesses but also the businessman's network of relationships with characters such as some repressors from the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), who would later be convicted of systematic human rights violations during the last military dictatorship.

They were his custodians.

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“Those guards, in fact, had a security agency called Bridees, which means ESMA Brigade, which was the strongest place of torture in the Argentine Republic.

Yabrán surrounded himself with these people to guarantee his business,” explained Michi.

The 1996 photos had immediate consequences for Cabezas.

"Throughout that year, José Luis received threats at his house, and the following summer, the summer of '97, we returned to do the season in Pinamar, with the intention of being able to achieve something else: get the interview with Yabrán," he recalled. Your partner.

“To achieve the interview, we set up guards, not knowing that there was already a criminal plan underway to get us out of the way, a criminal plan involving Yabrán's guards, the local police and one policeman in particular, Gustavo Prellezo, who ends up executing José Luis with a gang of common criminals”.

"Don't Forget Heads"

After his assassination, journalists and photojournalists from all the media took to the streets shouting a phrase that would remain engraved in the memory of the country.

"Don't forget Heads."

The judge in charge of the case, José Luis Macchi, verified that the head of Yabrán's custody, Gregorio Ríos, had entrusted the crime to members of the police of the province of Buenos Aires, who then acted together with common criminals hired to the mission, according to the sentence.


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After the fall of the material authors of the crime, Yabrán was cornered by Justice.

On May 20, 1998, 16 months after the murder of Cabezas, the businessman committed suicide in one of his ranches in the province of Entre Ríos, when the local police surrounded the property to arrest him and bring him before a judge.

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Key witnesses, the location of the cell phones of the police, the exchange of calls and the confession of the criminals who participated in the crime allowed, in February 2000, a court to sentence eight men to life in prison for the kidnapping and murder of heads.

Police officer Gustavo Prellezo, who pleaded not guilty and asked for his acquittal, was convicted as the perpetrator of the two shots fired at the photojournalist;

while Gregorio Ríos, head of Yabrán's custody, and whose defense maintained that there were no elements to accuse him, was convicted as an instigator;

Two other police officers, Sergio Cammaratta and Aníbal Luna, who also asked not to be convicted, were sentenced as primary participants, as were Horacio Braga, Sergio González, José Luis Auge and Héctor Retana, members of the gang known as "los ovenros". and whose defense asked the court to convict them only of the kidnapping.

Retana died in prison in 2001. Cammaratta, in 2015. None of the other convicts served their full sentence.

“There were two judges of the (Chamber of) Cassation (of the province of Buenos Aires) who lowered the sentences of the murderers and from then on, with two for one and good conduct, they began to go free, to such an extent that today there is no prisoner”, said Michi.

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Prellezo benefited from house arrest and is currently free.

CNN contacted Prellezo, but the former police officer declined to comment on the Cabezas case and the accusation against him.

The crime of Cabezas had direct consequences on the political power, the police and the judiciary of the province of Buenos Aires, which had to go through reforms to respond to a society shocked by the events.

Twenty-five years later, his family, friends and colleagues continue to ask the authorities and Argentines not to forget their heads.

Crimefreedom of the pressJournalists

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-01-25

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