Argentina: Life imprisonment for former rugby players who beat a young man to death

An Argentine court sentenced on Monday life imprisonment for 5 of the 8 young people accused of murdering 18-year-old Fernando Báez Sosa on January 18, 2020at the exit of a nightclub, a case that shocked public opinion in Argentina and Paraguay, where his parents are from.

In the Buenos Aires city of Dolores (200 kilometers south of the Argentine capital), the Justice announced the sentence of life imprisonment for Máximo Thomsen, Matías Benicelli, Enzo Comelli, Ciro Pertossi and Luciano Pertossi, requested by prosecutors and lawyers for the victim’s family in the trial that began in January.

While, Blas Cinalli, Ayrton Viollaz and Lucas Pertossi They were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The defendants listened standing up to the verdict, which declared five of them co-perpetrators criminally responsible for doubly aggravated homicide for the premeditated participation of two or more people and for treachery and for the other three secondary participants in the doubly aggravated homicide for premeditated contest of two or more people and treachery.

After the verdict, thomsen faded and the judges ordered the room to be cleared.

The convicts are part of a group of friends from Zárate (Buenos Aires province) who played rugby together and who they had gone on vacation to Villa Gesell (380 kilometers south of Buenos Aires) in January 2020.

the victim was Fernando Baez Sosa, resident in Buenos Aires and son of two Paraguayan immigrants, who was ambushed leaving the nightclub Le Brique, to which the group of friends had also gone, with whom they had staged an incident inside the premises.

The accused they brutally attacked Báez Sosa with kicks and punches all over his body, but punctually on the head, abdomen and jaw. They also beat up some of his friends when they came up to defend him.

The young man died as a result of a traumatic cardiac arrest due to neurogenic shock, Produced by multiple head injuries that generated a massive intraparenchymal intracranial hemorrhage without bone fracture.

The death of the young man generated a wave of widespread repudiation in Argentine public opinion and the trial was followed exhaustively by the presswith countless hours of live television and pages in the newspapers with all the versions of the case.

Likewise, the hearing was closely followed in Paraguay, whose Congress recently joined the calls for justice for Báez Sosa, because of the origin of their parents.