Gendarmerie

None of the two gendarmes who were investigated by the federal judge Ariel Lijo acknowledged its responsibility in attacks suffered by the then national deputies Leonardo Grosso and Victoria Donda in the previous treatment of the pension reform that drove Mauricio Macri. What they did say is that they were urgently sent to the Congress area in the midst of the huge operation that they organized Patricia Bullrich for the security of the summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was held at the end of 2017 in Buenos Aires.

On December 13, 2017, representatives Grosso, Donda and Lucila de Ponti walked towards Congress to participate in a hug against the pension reform. At that moment, they found that the Gendarmerie blocked their way.

The legislators approached some uniformed officers to ask to speak with the person in charge of the Gendarmerie operation. The response they received was: “The boss is Patricia Bullrich and she’s not going to talk to you”. Later, they began to beat them with sticks. Donda was kicked in the left ankle, immobilizing her. Grosso was thrown by a dog that bit him in the abdomen.

For these facts, Lijo investigated the senior commander of the Gendarmerie Walter Nelson Zurita –for Donda’s injuries– and then Leonardo Rafael Acosta –for the attack on Grosso–. The two denied the accusations.

Zurita reported that, for the WTO summit, the Gendarmerie was in charge of the security of some 20 places. Among them he listed the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), the Hilton hotel and the Exhibition Center –near the Public TV building–. Everything was coordinated from a unified command that worked from the headquarters of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) on Moreno street. On the fifth floor of the former Federal Coordination, there was a head of each of the security forces under Bullrich’s command and a representative of the Ministry of Security.

From there they received the order to abandon their post in the CCK and move to the vicinity of the Congress. The vans were parked at the height of Avenida de Mayo and Paraná. Later, about 350 gendarmes advanced on foot, said Zurita, who was in charge of the group. The two gendarmes said that the order was to prevent the demonstrators from reaching Congress.

Zurita gave an ambiguous version to distance himself from the attack on Donda. “Because of my position and the role that I have to fulfill in this type of operation, I never come into contact with any protester,” he said. But, after a few minutes, he ended up telling that he had a “verbal interaction” with the then deputy. According to the senior commander of the Gendarmerie, Donda told him that they wanted to give Congress a symbolic hug and he replied that they were not authorized. However, he denied having anything to do with the kicks suffered by the leader.

Acosta, for his part, said that he was with a force dog, which had two leashes and a muzzle. But the situation got out of hand when he blew up a bottle and hit the cheekbone of a Gendarmerie agent. According to the corporal, he felt someone jump on him. “The dog reacts, defends itself as if wanting to push it away from us,” he said, placing the responsibilities on the dog in his charge. Acosta also did not know at the time of the bite of four by centimeters that his “couple” had left Grosso.

Judge Lijo must now decide whether to prosecute the two members of the Gendarmerie for the injuries suffered by two opposition leaders to the then Macri government. The deputy of the Left Front and Workers-Unit (FIT-U) Myriam Bregman she is acting as Grosso’s lawyer in this case. Bregman had explained to Page 12 what the identification of the gendarmes was delayed for many years because the Ministry of Security –during the Bullrich administration– did everything possible to avoid it.