One of the five people involved in the murder of professor Santiago Morgado, whose body was found in a well in Sancti Spíritus last July, was released on bail. The other four involved in the crime remain in pretrial detention, according to the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office to the official newspaper Escambray.
María Esmeralda Pérez, head of the Criminal Proceedings department of the Sancti Spiritus Prosecutor’s Office, informed the newspaper that the criminal process “continues in progress” and that a DNA analysis is being carried out at the Central Laboratory of Criminalistics, in Havana, to confirm that the body found in a well in Sancti Spíritus, in a state of putrefaction, unequivocally corresponds to Morgado.
As for the former inmate, the authorities also prohibited him from leaving the national territory, while his companions remain under investigation. “The process is complex due to the number of people involved and the practice of a high number of investigative procedures, both in the province of Sancti Spíritus and in Camagüey,” Pérez said.
It was in this last province where Morgado’s murderers tried to sell the Suzuki motorcycle stolen from the professor, after several desperate sales, for 200,000 pesos. Pérez released the Prosecutor’s Office from responsibility for the delays, and alleged that, according to the Criminal Procedure Law, “the criminal investigator carries out the investigative actions and other proceedings of the preparatory phase in the shortest possible term and this term must not exceed of 90 days, but it can be justifiably extended by the prosecutor”.
The Morgado file was initiated on July 2, so that the period in which the Prosecutor’s Office can delay the process of those involved -180 days- is close to being fulfilled
The Morgado file was initiated on July 2, so that the period in which the Prosecutor’s Office can delay the process of those involved – 180 days – is close to being fulfilled. However, Pérez points out that even after that time has elapsed, the Attorney General of the Republic can grant a new extension.
The official press, in a previous report, had revealed that two of those involved had been the material authors of his violent death and that one of them knew him well. The first of the alleged assassins led Morgado to El Capitolio, a town in the Popular Council of Banao, where, hidden in the undergrowth, he was waiting for his partner.
The attackers used a stick and a stone, as well as two pieces of agricultural machinery, to plunge the professor’s body into a well up to three meters deep.
As for the rest of those involved, one of them drove Morgado’s motorcycle to Camagüey, where the fourth individual tried to sell it for an initial price of 800,000, which he soon had to give up. Finally, the fifth detainee was the intermediary of the sale. The Prosecutor’s Office did not specify which of them was released, although it is possible to intuit that it is one of these three men.
Of the five subjects, aged between 28 and 45, three are residents of Banao, one in the same town, another in El Pinto, and the third in El Capitolio. The other two lived in Vertientes, from which it follows that the crimes occurred in places they knew well.
Morgado’s acquaintances were the ones who placed the most emphasis on the search for the body, since the Police, as usual in these cases, were slow to join the investigation of the event.
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