Buenos Aires, March 3 (NA) -- The four accused in the death of Otoño Uriarte, the teenager who was sexually abused, mutilated, and murdered 19 years ago, have been acquitted following a ruling from the Río Negro Court of Appeals. According to the Argentine News Agency and as local media indicated, the Río Negro entity upheld the sentence that overturned the life imprisonment conviction and dismissed the appeals filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office and the plaintiffs. Maximiliano Lagos, José Jafri, Néstor Cau, and Ángel Antila were accused of the deprivation of liberty and subsequent murder of the victim, although this decision nullified the conviction imposed by a Trial Court, which in early 2025 had held the accused responsible and had set the same penalty. Last December, the court granted a horizontal review hearing to analyze the arguments for and against the sentence, at which time the prosecution requested the acquittal be revoked, considering it “arbitrary.” They argued that the ruling did not weigh scientific evidence, key clues, or the original assessment made by the Trial Court on a hair strand included in the file. Meanwhile, the prosecution listed testimonies that, in their opinion, allow for reconstructing a chain of inferences about a prior plan to intercept the young woman as she was cycling to a friend's house and that, upon not finding the vehicle where she had left it, she returned on foot. A testimony had placed the vehicle at the home of one of the accused, a detail that emerged from conversations between the victim's family. With this account as the axis, the prosecution considered that the accused knew the teenager's routines and that the theft of the vehicle would have facilitated taking her to less trafficked areas. The prosecution also emphasized that the Trial Court had direct contact with the witnesses, as well as pointing out that the review was carried out in a “fragmented” manner contrary to the joint analysis standards required for this type of process. For their part, the plaintiffs adhered to the argument and requested the annulment of the trial, highlighting that 19 years had passed without a firm judicial response and noted that some lines of the file could frame the case as crimes such as forced disappearance and human trafficking, so they considered that federal jurisdiction might correspond. Conversely, the defenses argued that the acquittal of August be confirmed, maintaining that the ruling is not arbitrary and that the prosecution did not raise concrete grievances that justify a new review. They highlighted that there had been dismissals in previous stages, under both the old and current Criminal Procedure Code, and that the 19 years of proceedings evidence, in their view, that there are no solid elements to attribute criminal responsibilities.
