Thursday April 6, 2023 | 8:45 a.m.
Two bus drivers accused of participating in the attack on the Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni, were arrested in the last few hours by the City Police.
The arrests were requested by the prosecutor Carlos Rolero Santurian, head of the Criminal and Misdemeanor Prosecutor’s Office No. 31, who is investigating the beating suffered by the official in the framework of the protests over the crime of the Line 620 bus driver in Virrey del Pino. happened early Monday morning. The detained drivers are charged with the crimes of minor injuries, assault and resistance to authority: the arrests were endorsed by Judge Luisa Escrich.
The procedures in charge of the Investigations Department of Commune 9 of the City Police occurred on Wednesday night in the towns of Merlo and Gregorio de Laferrere. The detainees were identified as Jorge Galiano and Jorge Ezequiel Zerda. Both were easily identifiable since their faces were registered – when they attacked the official – by the security cameras in the area and by the media that covered the protest. The statement by members of the Buenos Aires City Police was key to proceeding with the arrests of the two defendants, who will be investigated this Friday. For now, they wait locked up in a policeman of the Buenos Aires force. Personnel from the Morón DDI of the Buenos Aires Police also participated in the arrests.
Berni had clarified that he was not going to make any complaint against his attackers. The case of Prosecutor No. 31 was initiated ex officio after the incidents, in which eight police officers were injured in addition to the minister. For his part, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights of the province of Buenos Aires, Julio Alak, decided to make a presentation before the national Justice to clarify the facts that had the head of the Security portfolio as a victim.
Alak considered that the events suffered by Berni constitute the crimes of attack against authority, injuries and public intimidation. He clarified that, although Sergio Berni made the personal decision not to report the attack, the institutional seriousness of what happened justifies the intervention of justice with a view to clarifying it.
The presentation before the Justice responds to the fact that the facts occurred within the jurisdiction of CABA, but, according to his consideration, “the legal classification of the facts exceeds the jurisdiction of the Buenos Aires Contraventional Justice.”
There is a second cause for the incidents on Monday in the Buenos Aires Contravention Court. This file is being processed by the prosecutor’s office specialized in institutional violence in charge of Valeria Massaglia, who is investigating the police force who hit one of the protesters, a driver of a line in the area, with his shield in the face.
Berni was supposed to appear to testify before the prosecutor Rolero this Wednesday but he was absent alleging “issues inherent to his function.” Sources of the case indicated to Infobae that the official of Axel Kicillof communicated with the head of the Criminal, Misdemeanor and Misdemeanor Prosecutor’s Office No. 31 in Buenos Aires to inform him that he could not appear at the prosecutor’s office.
It is not ruled out that the arrests of drivers linked to the attack on the minister will continue in the next few hours, since the prosecutor in charge of the investigation also ordered raids on the bus companies to seize files from the workers, with the aim of verifying with the recorded images of the incident with Berni and thus identify more aggressors who participated in the beating.
