Buenos Aires, March 4 (NA) -- Dog handler Marcos Herrero, who participated in the searches in the investigation into the death and disappearance of Facundo Astudillo Castro, will remain in detention after the ratification of a seven-year prison sentence for tampering with evidence. As reported by the Argentine News Agency and, as stated on Fiscales.gob, the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation's Chamber III confirmed the sentence for planting evidence and giving false testimony to harm police officers. Astudillo Castro had disappeared in April 2020, when he was last seen in the Buenos Aires locality of Pedro Luro during a police checkpoint. Three months later, his body was found in a sector of mangroves, in the locality of General Daniel Cerri, Bahía Blanca district. Judges Carlos Alberto Mahiques, Juan Carlos Gemignani, and Diego Barroetaveña rejected, by majority, the cassation appeal filed by Herrero's defense attorney, who had stated that the declarations made by his client were not false, but 'technical interpretations based on his professional experience'. In this regard, the defense argued that the Bahía Blanca Federal Oral Tribunal (TOF) 'disregarded such arguments and based its decision on arbitrary assumptions, violating essential principles of the accusatory criminal process, namely: principles of culpability, legality, and the criminal law of the act'. The judge sentenced the 49-year-old canine expert, a native of Viedma, Río Negro, to a seven-year prison sentence for the crime of 'aggravated repeated false testimony' for a total of seven facts, as well as absolute disqualification for double the time of the sentence. IP Also in the dispositivo part of the ruling, the magistrate ordered that this conviction be unified with another that had been imposed on March 21, 2023, by Criminal Court No. 2 of the Judicial Power of Mendoza for the crime of 'simple concealment'. Judicial sources indicated that the judge of the Federal Oral Court then imposed that a single sentence of 7 years and 8 months in prison be applied to the canine expert, who is currently serving house arrest in Viedma.
