Buenos Aires, April 7 (NA) – The Oral Court in Criminal Matters No. 4 (TOC) of San Isidro rejected this Tuesday the request for parole for Nicolás Pachelo, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of María Marta García Belsunce, committed on October 27, 2002, in the Carmel gated community of Pilar. The lawyer for Carlos Carrascosa, Gustavo Hachem, spoke with the Argentine News Agency and explained that the appeal filed by the defense “does not correspond” due to the “double conformity” of the maximum sentence: “He can request parole after 25 years, because the crime was committed under the previous Penal Code, today it would be 35 years.” In this sense, he confirmed that Pachelo's lawyers, who was acquitted in the case of robberies that occurred in the gated community “Los Pingüinos”, appealed the ruling and took the case to the Supreme Court of the province of Buenos Aires, so the sentence is not yet final. “They are going to reject it anyway, he has no chance,” Hachem considered, showing his satisfaction upon learning of the decision of judges Andrés Andrejin and Victoria María Guglielmetti. In turn, the victim's widow described the guilty party's request for this benefit as “absurd” and “ridiculous” because he has a sentence for double homicide. On March 27, 2024, the Buenos Aires Casation Chamber I imposed a life sentence on Pachelo for considering him criminally responsible for the crimes of aggravated robbery with the use of a weapon and aggravated homicide for criminal cause with the use of a firearm. The court had overturned Pachelo's acquittal after a trial he faced in 2022, in which he came out clean for the murder although he was convicted for several robberies. The Casation Chamber considered that the murder of García Belsunce “was carried out by the couple's neighbor, with Pachelo being the one who killed the sociologist in order to procure the impunity of the robbery that was being carried out in the victims' home.” Almost a year later, in February 2025, Casation ratified that resolution by denying the appeal filed by the defense.
