Last Wednesday, the National Police mistakenly captured a man for allegedly being responsible for the crime of the girl Felicita Estigarribia, which occurred in 2004.
A similar event happened in 2019, when a man was captured and later released because he was not the real perpetrator named Fredy Florenciano Brítez.
In another case, since November 28, Aida Villalba, ex-domestic of Javier Ibarra, ex-prosecutor who died in strange circumstances three days before, has been detained for her alleged participation in the event. Around the same case, on January 5, Óscar Caballero, former secretary of Ibarra, was arrested. Now it remains to be seen if the domestic recovers her freedom after being detained for almost 40 days.
MARTENS
Juan Martens, a criminologist, stated that in the criminological literature there is a term called “scapegoats”, which are people, generally innocent, who are presented as guilty when the police are forced to give answers or results.
“Since he does not find a way to solve it, he usually apprehends people who are not related to the fact. This is documented in criminology studies. And on many occasions, in our country that happens, when the police are not expeditious, when they do not give results and there is a lot of citizen pressure, this type of situation occurs.
In the case of the girl Felicita, the police presented a person as guilty but later backed down.
“These are police practices that need to be strengthened, unprofessional that does not use intelligence techniques to identify, capture and arrest people linked to punishable acts and closely associated with a dictatorial past where the police, without any type of control, did and undid. I think that it is possible to understand, with this theoretical framework, what happened with that case, ”he said.
IBARRA
Regarding the case of former prosecutor Javier Ibarra, he affirmed that, like the police, the prosecutor’s office is responsible for arresting a woman who was an employee and charged with aggravated robbery and then the apparent weapon is found in another person who is linked to another question.
“We are in the presence of unprofessional police who are increasingly willing to present anyone as guilty when they do not have a fast, effective way to clarify the facts. It is not only the responsibility of the police, but also with the complicity of the Public Ministry that these situations occur, ”he explained.
Finally, he argued that citizens are exposed to spending several days in jail without a valid reason because we live in an unreliable, unprofessional State, where the authorities do not flinch for violating the law.
“They screw up our lives, that is why it is important to strengthen a police, judicial and fiscal institution that respects the fundamental rights of all people,” he concluded.
