Buenos Aires, June 24 (EFE).- Two prosecutors from the Argentine province of Corrientes (northeast) charged six people this Monday with the abduction of the child Loan Peña, a case that keeps the South American country in suspense.
In a press conference, prosecutors Guillermo Barry and Juan Carlos Castillo, from the Fiscal Unit of the Corrientes city of Goya, indicated that all the evidence collected so far in the investigation leads to ruling out the hypothesis that the child was lost, to pay for a kidnapping.
Loan, 5 years old, disappeared on June 13 near the town of 9 de Julio (Corrientes).
That day, the boy and his father, José Peña, had gone to lunch at the house of his paternal grandmother, Catalina Peña, in Paraje Algarrobal, and then the little boy went to the mountains to pick oranges in the company of other children and three adults: Bernardino Benítez, uncle of the child; Daniel “Fierrito” Ramírez, and his partner, Mónica del Carmen Millapi.
When the group was preparing to return, the elders realized that Loan had disappeared.
Within the framework of the judicial investigation, prosecutors decided this Monday to accuse Victoria Caillava, an official of the municipality of 9 de Julio, and her husband, Carlos Pérez, a retired captain of the Argentine Navy, as alleged co-authors of the crime of “capturing persons for the purposes of exploitation, aggravated by being a victim under 18 years of age”.
In the expert reports carried out on Caillava’s car and her husband’s truck, traces of Loan were found.
Prosecutors also charged Benítez, Ramírez and Millapi as alleged primary participants in the same crime, for having “provided help without which the act could not have been committed.”
“Clearly they did all the corresponding distraction mechanism so that the child could later be captured,” the prosecutors indicated.
Prosecutors also accused the commissioner of 9 de Julio, Walter Maciel, of alleged cover-up, by “hindering” the judicial investigation with a “clear alteration of the scene of the incident” that prosecutors attribute to the police chief.
The six defendants remain detained.
Given that the accusation is for kidnapping, the investigation of the facts must pass to the jurisdiction of the federal Justice system.
The prosecutors have alerted all federal security forces and Interpol (international police) to find the child. EFE
nk/nvm
