Supported by the images of the videos, the expert reports and the statements of the eyewitnesses of the fact, the members of the Court I of Dolores, María Claudia Castro, Christian Rabaia and Emiliano Lázzari, considered that all those accused of the criminal attack against Fernando Báez Sosa , which occurred on January 18, 2020, were guilty and, unanimously, making a distinction of roles and responsibilities, between co-authors and secondary participants, they applied 5 life sentences and 3 15-year prison sentences.
Máximo Thomsen, Ciro Pertossi, Enzo Comelli, Matías Benicelli and Luciano Pertossi received the harshest sanction, which, if confirmed in other criminal instances (now Cassation is coming), could leave them in jail for half a century. Meanwhile, for the remaining three, Ayrton Viollaz, Blas Cinalli and Lucas Pertossi, the situation is less burdensome, although they may just be thinking of leaving the prison system, if their legal qualification is not changed, when they complete a decade of imprisonment.
The verdict, which was communicated by a secretary minutes after the scheduled time, which was one in the afternoon, filled the courtroom with tension, where there was anguish, shouting and crying, almost at the same time that Thomsen, already sentenced , he lost his balance and fell on one of the guards.
At that time, the president of the Court ordered that the premises be evacuated to facilitate the medical care of who, she referred to, was the leader of the group.
A hundred people asked for justice on the outskirts of the Court of Dolores, where shouts of “murderers” and “life for all” were heard / Télam
In the resolution, to which this newspaper had access, as required by the prosecution, made up of the prosecution and the individual victim, the qualifiers of premeditation and treachery, which many legal experts disputed, were considered proven.
“The detailed analysis of the evidence gathered in the trial has convinced me that the original plan in which the eight defendants colluded consisted, in its origin, of beating Fernando Báez Sosa,” the sentence stated.
In this sense, it was pointed out, based on the analysis of the evidence exhibited in the process, broadcast largely from the YouTube channel of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court, that the convicted “organized themselves to brutally beat him, in a group, as in other occasions and with respect to other people”. That was the first mention of what was understood as the execution of a criminal plan.
“It was clearly evidenced after the conduct of the trial that, when the victim, after the -at least two- first blows, was left in a state of semi-unconsciousness, lying on the ground, at the mercy of his attackers, in an absolute state of defenselessness, The action of the active subjects was, now, guided by the unequivocal intention of causing his death”, they determined in the foundations of the sentence.
The judges indicated that “it has been made clear through direct and compelling evidence -testimonies, videos and expert findings- that 5 of the 8 defendants laid hands on Fernando Báez Sosa, or else carried out an indispensable conduct, once the victim was found surrendered and in a state of utter helplessness”.
At that point, they referred to the brutal actions of Thomsen, Ciro Pertossi, Comelli, Benicelli and Luciano Pertossi.
Thus they took into account that there was a motive, the means chosen to attack him, the state of defenselessness, but above all “the unusual violence displayed: the intensity of the blows is evident in light of the short time in which the homicide was carried out.” . Just as they also considered “the areas of the body to which the blows were directed: essentially the head.”
And, furthermore, they considered the way they acted and what they did next.
“Not only were they friends, but it was not the first time they organized to hit,” the magistrates recalled. And about the attitude after the attack, they explained based on one of the videos in which the defendants are observed “walking away from the scene of the incident, hugging each other.”
“The rules of logic and experience allow me to infer that the immediately subsequent behavior evidenced -and the one that continued until the morning they were apprehended- is not compatible with ‘not wanting to kill’ or ‘we didn’t want to kill him’. Especially when the result, also in light of the images that we have all seen, clearly indicated the situation, at least extremely serious – if not irreversible – in which the victim was already when they stopped beating him,” judge Castro remarked. in his vote, to which the other magistrates adhered.
Regarding the intervention of the other defendants, Lucas Pertossi, Ayrton Viollaz and Cinalli, they maintained that they took part in the act, but “their contributions were not essential for the conduct of the co-perpetrators to be consummated.”
That is to say, “they participated in the execution of the act, but carrying out a criminal action that, if the homicide result were hypothetically suppressed, would still have occurred,” they understood.
In the same sense, they described that “after seeing the state of absolute defenselessness in which the victim was left immediately after receiving the first two blows and the actions of her consorts, they supported the co-perpetrators and, according to the role that each one would assume in the attack focused on the fatal victim, they provided collaboration, although not essential, sufficiently apt to favor the consummation of the crime.”
For the judges, the secondary participants “hit and kicked Ignacio Vaudagna, Juan Manuel Pereyra Rozas, Juan Bautista Besuzzo, Lucas Begide and Tomás Agustín D’Alessandro, in order to prevent Fernando Báez Sosa’s friends from helping him , causing the aforementioned injuries, which were characterized as minor.”
The court, it was indicated, took into account the testimony of nine witnesses who were considered “key” to determine the responsibilities of each of the accused.
Lastly, given what they considered evident irregularities in their statement, the magistrates ordered that Juan Pedro Guarino and Tomás Colazo be investigated for the alleged crime of “false testimony”, as requested by the prosecution.
The sentence for the murder of Fernando Báez Sosa had 5 life sentences and 3 sentences to 15 years in prison
THOMSEN’S MOTHER’S REACTION
“This is all a lie, get rid of all the journalists, the whore that gave birth to them. Three years torturing him. I don’t care about anything else, ”said Rosalía Zárate screaming, in the middle of the courtroom she barely saw her son vanish from her.
The young man was immediately attended to by doctors and taken out of the courtroom, for which reason the court interrupted the reading for a few minutes.
The hearing, as is known, had more than 20 members of the provincial Penitentiary Service, who were located behind the defendants and also next to the benches occupied by their relatives to avoid incidents.
