“First of all, I want to apologize to Fernando’s family because I never wanted this to happen. I never had any plan or intention to kill anyone.. Every day I think about it, every day I am sorry for what happened. I wish I could turn back time, but I can’t anymore. But I want to make it clear that I never wanted to kill anyone,” were the last words of Matias Benicelli before the sentence of the Oral Criminal Court No. 1 of Dolores was known for the crime of Fernando Báez Sosa. Eleven days later, the magistrates María Claudia Castro, Christian Rabaia and Emiliano Lázzari they sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The judges reached that resolution based on different testimonies, videos and expert evidence that they took to reconstruct the events. Thus they considered it proven that Benicelli, together with Máximo Thomsen, Enzo Comelli and Ciro and Luciano Pertossithey attacked Fernando with blows, knocked him down and, taking advantage of the victim’s defenseless state, continued to brutally attack him “with clear intentions of ending his life.”
The attack lasted 50 seconds. In Benicelli’s case, some witnesses identified him in the middle of the scene shouting and haranguing. “Let’s see if you keep hitting, you fucking nigger.”, they heard him say. Another of the 87 witnesses who testified in the debate said that he saw him hitting Fernando’s friends and that he specifically identified him by his hair: his “samurai bun” had caught his attention.
For his part, the security employee at the Le Brique bowling alley who removed him from the place after the incidents between both groups of friends, declared that Benicelli “He was very aggressive”. “When I get to where he was, one of the boys who was fighting falls on his back. I pick him up and I see that one of the white shirts (Benicelli) turns around, hits him and when he wants to hit another, I reduce him,” he explained.
The most weighty evidence against Benicelli was the discovery of traces of Fernando’s blood on his clothes: The genetic profile of the victim was detected in two raised stains on the white flowered shirt and blue jeans that he was wearing that morning on January 18, 2020. For the judges, this “demonstrates unequivocally direct contact with the body of Fernando Báez Sosa and that He was one of the five who took part in the deadly attack”.
After the Criminal Cassation Chamber confirmed the sentence to the maximum penalty that had been awarded in a Dolores court, Benicelli withdrew from the legal representation of Hugo Tomei -who had sponsored him in the trial- and broke the silence.
He stated that Tomei’s theory emphasized not speaking so as not to hinder the situation of other young people, since it could lead to contradictions. Along these lines, he said that the lawyer’s determination not to let them testify did not represent his individual interests and deprived him of giving explanations.
Benicelli, locked up in the Melchor Romero prison, hired a new lawyer, Carlos Attias, and appealed the ruling to the Buenos Aires Supreme Court of Justice. “Because I understand that due to the ineffective defense of my rights and procedural guarantees, I have been unjustly convicted for an act I did not commit“, argument.
Through a five-page document, he expanded on his situation before Chamber II of the Buenos Aires Criminal Court of Cassation, made up of judges María Florencia Budiño and Fernando Mancini Hebeca.
“I understand from my perspective as an accused, without undermining the technical conditions of Dr. Hugo Tomei, that by bringing together the defense of all the accused, he generated a conflict of personal interests that violated my right to defense at trial. I point out in parallel that neither the undersigned nor my family members paid fees for the services provided by the aforementioned lawyer, but rather we were persuaded to appoint him for my technical defense, in order not to hinder the defense of other co-defendants,” he said about Tomei.
The young man assured that he had an “ineffective” defense. “As an example, I inform the court that I never heard of blood spatter on my clothing that would belong to Fernando. When I found out about it, during a hearing, I expressed my willingness to testify to explain this contamination, but my technical defense objected so as not to compromise the situation of my co-consorts,” he explained.
He also assured that he wanted to confront the statements of a witness. This is “who stated that” the convicted person “was violent” and had to remove him from the club “through the use of force.” “Actually, I peacefully and voluntarily left the place in his company,” he assured.
For Benicelli, The crime was the product of “a brawl” that ended “with the tragic result of the unwanted death of Fernando.”
“Matías, in his good manhood, never betrayed or staged the murderers. He never spoke. I had an interview with him and I can swear by my children that he had no type of impact on the fateful outcome of the murder of Fernando Báez Sosa,” Attías said in statements to TN. And he insisted: “He did not speak during the trial at the express request of his previous defender. If each one had said what each one did, surely the final result would have been different.”.
“The only victim is Fernando Báez Sosa, and his parents. There is collateral damage and among them is Matías Benicelli, who is paying with a sentence for an act that he did not commit,” the lawyer added.
And he expanded: “I say this because in both the Cassation ruling and the Dolores ruling there are horrors, omissions and arbitrariness. For example, there are five testimonies that show that Matías was part of those who carried out the beating. However, a few hours after testifying after Fernando’s murder, four of those witnesses say exactly the opposite of what they said at trial and put Matías in a place and time opposite to where these events took place. ”.
