The nurse’s defense Brenda Agüero (27), arrested and charged as allegedly responsible for the deaths of babies at the Ramón Carrillo Maternity Neonatal Hospital in Córdobaanticipated that he will challenge the prosecutor Raúl Garzón who is in charge of the investigation by arguing that “he is not being objective and is putting the innocence at risk” of his defendant.
The nurse, accompanied by her lawyer Juan Pedro García, appeared before the prosecutor Garzón to learn about the new evidence for the charges incorporated into the case.
After completing this procedure, he refrained from expanding his investigative statement and also denied the facts that he was accused of, as he did in previous instances, the lawyer said.
Garcia also anticipated that he will “recuse” to the prosecutor when affirming that when the official visited the nurse at the Bouwer prison, where she is staying, “he judged her and intimidated her” telling her “get ready that the other babies you killed will come to you”.
What the prosecutor did is of “terrible institutional gravity. He cannot continue in the case for one more day. He is not being objective,” the defense attorney told Télam, adding that this conduct by the official “puts Brenda’s innocence at risk and the guarantees of impartiality of the process”.
The lawyer also said that he has been observing that the prosecutor Garzón “is not working objectively”and as an example he mentioned that the nurse “is kept in pretrial detention without there being sufficient evidence or elements” to deprive her of her liberty.
“She is the only one arrested and without evidence, so the remaining defendants would also have to be detained,” he considered.
The nurse was arrested on August 19 last and, during the investigation of the case, the prosecutor charged her with ‘three acts of qualified homicide for applying an insidious method of supplying potassium incompatible for life’, which would be the cause of the deaths of babies born healthy, who They occurred between March and May of this year.
She is also accused of the same crime in the degree of “attempt” on eight babies who would have gone through the same practice and survived, and correspond to those born between March and June of this year.
Exhumation of the bodies
Within the framework of the investigation, in the first week of September the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) exhumed the bodies of three babies to submit them to scientific studies, in order to try to determine the identity and causes of their deaths.
In early August, prosecutor Garzón opened an investigation based on complaints made in June, regarding five cases of “suspicious deaths” of babies born healthy at the provincial neonatal hospital.
The case has seven defendants, among them the nurse Agüero, who is the only one arrested and charged directly with the deaths.
The remaining defendants are the former Minister of Health Diego Cardozo; the former Secretary of Health, Pablo Carvajal and the former deputy director of the hospital, Alejandro Salama, for the crime of “omission of the duties of a public official”, according to the file.
Also, the former director Liliana Asís; and the former heads of the neonatal areas Marta Gómez Flores and Adriana Morales for the crimes of “omission of the duties of a public official and ideological falsehood.”
