BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP) — Three police officers in Argentina were sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for the racially motivated killing of a 17-year-old boy, and six others received sentences of four to eight years for covering up the crime.
In a case that became emblematic of institutional violence in Argentina, three officers were convicted of the 2021 killing of Lucas Gonzalez, a teen from a poor area on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Gonzalez and three friends were attacked while driving after a football team tryout session.
Officers Gabriel Isassi, Fabian Lopez and Juan Jose Nieva received life sentences for aggravated homicide, and “racial hatred and abuse of office,” and for the attempted murder of the three other youths who were with Gonzalez.
“They stigmatized them because they were ‘morochos’ (brown-skinned), because they came from a deprived neighborhood, but they went out to train. They saw them, they waited for them, they tortured them, they burned his body with cigarettes,” Lucas’s father, Hector Gonzalez, said before he entered the court.
Prosecutors said that a burn mark on the youth’s body appeared to have been inflicted after he was shot but before he died in hospital.
Eleven officers were accused of tampering with evidence, but five were acquitted.
“It is a historic sentence for Argentina, so that there may never be cases like Lucas Gonzalez again,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer Gregorio Dalbon said.
“We have never had convictions for institutional violence for racial hatred before,” he said.
– ‘Black slum-dweller’ –
The youngsters had gone to try out at the Barracas Central club from Florencio Varela, on the southern edge of the city, in the car of the father of one of the young men.
When they stopped at a kiosk to buy a drink, an unmarked police car approached. The youths feared that it was driven by criminals, so they sped up to get away. They were shot at from the other car.
Lucas Gonzalez was hit twice in the head and died hours later in hospital.
One of his friends managed to escape but the other two were pulled out of the car, thrown to the ground, handcuffed, kicked and arrested.
Police claimed there had been a confrontation and planted a toy gun in their car, it was shown at the trial.
“It was very sad, I had to lose a friend right in front of my eyes. We are soccer players, nothing more,” said Joaquin Gomez, who was driving the car.
“We went to buy a juice. They got out to kill us. They didn’t shout anything. They threw me to the ground, they hit me, they told me I was a ‘black slum-dweller’ and that they would have to shoot me in the head like my friend,” said Gomez.
During the trial one police officer who ended up being convicted detailed how the cover-up was carried out and said he feared reprisals.
Before hearing the verdict, officer Angel Arevalos, who was acquitted, accused the city’s police chief of pressuring officers not to talk about the case.
© Agence France-Presse