Junior Benítez
suffered a severe setback in terms of his judicial situation, because they
rejected a request to obtain his release
.
The footballer trained in Lanús and with a past in Boca Juniors, among other teams, has been
detained for more than a month
after failing to comply with the house arrest to which he was subjected as accused of gender violence against his ex-partner Anabelia Ayala, who took her own life. in New Year.
In this way, Benítez
will arrive at the trial
for which he is charged with the crimes of "coercion aggravated by the use of a weapon, damage, threats, disobedience and possession of a weapon without due legal authorization",
housed in the Lomas de Zamora mayor's office.
.
The process will begin next March 19.
The ruling that denied Benítez's freedom was signed by the Second Chamber of the Chamber of Appeals and Criminal Guarantees of Lomas de Zamora, made up of judges Pablo Alberto Little and Alejandro Adrián Rojas.
Both, unanimously, considered the approach of the footballer's defense, carried out by the lawyer María Inés Salomone, insufficient, and endorsed the actions of the Correctional Court 8 of Lomé, headed by Manuel Barreiro.
"The defense's allegation is limited to stating that he never had the intention of being absent from his home and that there is still evidence to establish whether he transgressed the limits that were imposed on him," the magistrates stated.
In any case, they later added: "However, what Dr. Salomone argued in her writing has not specifically refuted the grounds on which the court of first instance reached the conviction regarding Benítez's procedural misconduct in having failed to comply with
the commitment assumed when house arrest was granted
as a way to mitigate the coercive effects of preventive detention.
Video
The soccer player was with Anabelia Ayala hours before the woman, who had reported him for gender violence, took her own life in her home in Malvinas Argentinas.
Benítez
has been detained since January 12
, after violating the conditions of the house arrest that had been granted to him in this case, when he passed by his ex-partner's house, days before he committed suicide.
In fact,
he continues to be investigated in a parallel case for "investigations of causes of death"
instructed by the Justice of Esteban Echeverría, after Ayala's father reported that Benítez induced his daughter to commit suicide and that he even had a video call. with her when in the early hours of January 1 the woman hanged herself.
The four acts of violence that Junior Benítez is accused of
Regarding the four acts of violence that Benítez is accused of and for which he will be tried within a month, they took place between January 2021 and May 2023.
According to the prosecutor's accusation,
the first of them happened on January 16, 2021
, in the house located at 600 Rodríguez Peña, in the Almirante Brown district, where Benítez destroyed the files of a notebook belonging to his ex-partner's family.
The next day, Benítez allegedly broke into the same home with a firearm
and, in a context of gender violence, threatened Juan Carlos Ayala, his partner's father, so that he would not intervene in the problems that existed between him and his wife. daughter, after which he set fire to various items belonging to Anabelia at the door of the home.
Another of the events that he is accused of occurred
on February 28, 2022
, when, according to the prosecution, the footballer disobeyed the prohibition of approaching within 300 meters of his father-in-law and his family group and threatened him: "You reported me, "You made me go to jail, I'm going to kill you, you're out of luck."
In that same incident, he also threatened to kill another family member.
The family of Anabelia Ayala, Junior Benítez's ex-partner, and their request for justice.
Photo Emmanuel Fernandez
Meanwhile
, on March 18, 2022
, and always at the same address, Benítez would have once again disobeyed the prohibition on approaching his partner's house, whom he threatened with a knife to make him open the door, although due to the refusal of The woman damaged the four tires of her father's Peugeot 406 car.
Finally, the Public Ministry accuses Benítez of having had a Bersa 9 millimeter caliber pistol in his home in Esteban Echeverría's party whose possession permit had expired.
Within the framework of all these cases,
the Justice ordered the house arrest of Benítez, although this was revoked
on January 12 at the request of the Ayala family's lawyer, Rodrigo Tripolone and the prosecutor Marcela Dimundo, who denounced that the footballer failed to comply the judicial measure to go out to look for Anabelia, days before she committed suicide.
A history marked by violence
The death of Anabelia (29) was discovered on the morning of January 1, when her relatives found her without vital signs in her room.
According to her father, the young woman had spent the night of December 30 with Benítez, who had a 300-meter perimeter restriction against him due to a series of complaints of threats and gender violence.
Juan Carlos Ayala revealed to
Clarín
that, after the death of his daughter, he received an audio from Benítez's relatives, in which they indicated that the former Boca player had a video call while Anabelia took her own life.
In that audio you hear the voice of a woman saying: "We didn't get to toast. We didn't toast because she had an app through which Junior was watching the girl hang herself."
In this regard, Juan Carlos considered that "Benítez was one hundred percent to blame for what happened" and asked that "justice be done" for his death.
With information from Télam.
IS