The Supreme Court of Justice upheld the conviction of a group of agents and officials from the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF) for torturing a detainee to death in Unit No. 9 in Neuquén and for attempting to cover up the fact.
The victim was Argentino Pelozo Iturri, 38, known as 'El Rengo Argentino', who died on April 8, 2008, after a brutal beating he received inside the prison, just days after being arrested for allegedly murdering a police officer.
According to the investigation, the man was beaten by several prison agents while begging them to stop.
The sentence included former regional chief Gabriel Eduardo Grobli, the unit's physician Juan Carlos Heredia, and the nurse Miguel Ángel Carrilao for obstruction of justice and failure to report the crime.
The oral court that handed down the convictions stated in its ruling that 'without any exaggeration, the death was foreseeable for the victim himself and, without a doubt, it was also foreseeable for the cowardly agents who empowered themselves by their numbers and authority over the detainee'.
In its resolution, it described the case as an example of the systematic use of violence within the former Unit 9, where the Penitentiary Service tried 'to present a very different picture from what truly occurred'.
The Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation had confirmed the most serious convictions and ordered a review of the sentences for obstruction of justice.
Finally, the prison guards sentenced to life imprisonment took the case to the Court, which dismissed their appeals under Article 280 of the National Civil and Commercial Procedural Code, thus leaving the sentence final.
The highest court, signed by judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Ricardo Lorenzetti, declared the appeals from the defense 'inadmissible'.
The National Penitentiary Prosecutor's Office, a complainant in the case, considered the ruling 'historic', constituting a key precedent regarding the criminal liability of prison agents in cases of torture and death of persons in state custody.
'Stop, you're going to kill me,' he managed to shout before suffering a cardiorespiratory arrest that caused his death.
In March 2019, the Oral Criminal Federal Court of Neuquén sentenced agents Carlos Alberto Vergara, Orlando Horacio John, Pablo Ángel Muñiz, Javier Félix Pelliza, Pablo David Sepúlveda, Daniel Ulises Romero, José Lorenzo Retamal, and José Walter Quintana to life imprisonment for the crime of torture followed by death. lesser sentences were also given to the then head of the unit, Héctor Oscar Ledesma; the deputy head, José Roberto Sosa; and the head of external and internal security, Daniel Ricardo Huenul, for omission of preventing torture and ideological falsehood.
