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Vázquez Sarmiento is accused of the appropriation of Ezequiel Rochistein Tauro and of the kidnapping of Patricia Roisinblit and José Pérez Rojo.
For the moment, the repressor Juan Carlos Vazquez Sarmiento he will have to spend the summer in Ezeiza prison, after the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber confirmed his trial with preventive detention. The Air Force repressor was captured last october after having been a fugitive for 20 years: he fled when he was one step away from being investigated for the appropriation of Ezequiel Rochistein Taurus and, over the years, he was required for his participation in the kidnapping of Patricia Roisinblit Y Jose Perez Rojo, daughter and son-in-law of Rosa Roisinblit, the vice president of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
In a ruling that was known yesterday, Chamber I of the Federal Criminal and Correctional Chamber of the City of Buenos Aires ratified the decision issued in November by federal judge Daniel Rafecas from the Investigating Court 3 to prosecute Vázquez Sarmiento with preventive detention for the “illegal deprivation of liberty aggravated by mediating violence or threats” by Roisinblit, Pérez Rojo and Gustavo Pontnau, José’s partner in the toy store from which they were taken on October 6, 1978.
“There are sufficient elements to consider that Juan Carlos Vázquez Sarmiento intervened in the facts investigated, we will be inclined to confirm his prosecution,” said the chambermaids. Pablo Bertuzzi and Leopoldo Bruglia in an argument with which his colleague agreed Mariano Llorens. “The evidence described is abundant and consistent, to the point where it allows to distort the defense argument according to which the accused could not have been present on the day of the illegal arrests,” they concluded.
It is known that the couple, who had a baby daughter and were expecting their second child, was held captive at the Buenos Aires Regional Intelligence Agency (RIBA). Patricia was transferred to the ESMA where she gave birth to Guillermo, who was appropriated and later restored in 2000. De Pontnau is unknown place of captivity. The couple and he remain missing.
Among the elements that appear in the case and that implicate Vázquez Sarmiento in these events, stands out the photographic recognition that was made by Marcelo Moreyra, Pérez Rojo’s cousin, and who received Mariana, the couple’s baby, when, after being kidnapped with them for a few hours, she was handed over as part of the operation. Moreyra pointed out that the repressor of the Air Force was one of the members of the gang that put Mariana in his arms. He was just over a year old. Another of the data that involves him comes from Guillermo’s appropriation story, where it was proven that “el Colorado”, as Vázquez Sarmiento was identified, was the boss of Francisco Gómez, who kept the son of Roisinblit and Pérez Rojo and registered him as his own son. Both were involved in the intelligence structure of the RIBA.
But the “Colorado” Vázquez Sarmiento was also required by another Investigating Court, Federal Court number 6, to give explanations for the appropriation of Ezequiel, the son of María Graciela Tauro and Jorge Daniel Rochistein, kidnapped from a Hurlingham bar in May 1976, clandestinely detained at the Castelar III Police Station and “Mansión Seré”. María Graciela was transferred to ESMA, where Ezequiel was born some day in November of that year, it is not known which one.
As part of the subrogation of that Court, Rafecas ordered the capture of the repressor, located by the Airport Security Police last October while he was entering a department in the Buenos Aires town of Ituzaingó. It had been 20 years that he was supposedly being wanted. Rafecas investigated him for that fact and later in the cause of the kidnapping of Roisinblit, Pérez Rojo and Pontnau.
Less firm were the chambermaids when confirming the preventive detention imposed on the repressor by Rafecas. Although they found no arguments that would allow them to focus on the fact that Vázquez Sarmiento he was a fugitive for two decades and that at the time of his arrest circulated with a false identity, they left a very slight gap through which the possibility of granting him home detention can be sneaked: “We understand that, for the moment, it is necessary to confirm the preventive detention of the accused. This does not prevent the magistrate, in what follows, to corroborate whether the case presents the precautions that would allow the moderation of the detention that the repressor has been taking, concluded judges Bruglia and Bertuzzi.