The oral trial for the femicide of Agostina Gisfman, the young woman murdered and set on fire in 2021 in the Neuquén city of Centenario, begins this Tuesday and has five defendants sitting on the bench, two of whom were recorded in a conversation in which they allegedly planned to kill the victim at the request of the wife of one of them.
“This case is a classic example of the objectification of a person, without the slightest interest in life and their dignity,” Diego Vázquez, a lawyer for the victim’s family and who He expects the defendants to be sentenced to life in prison.
Judicial sources informed Télam that last week the popular jury selection hearing was held, which was made up of 16 members -12 regulars and 4 alternates- and with gender parity.
According to the spokespersons, the debate is expected to last from September 13 to 23 in the Judicial City of Neuquén Capital and before the Judge of Guarantees, Leticia Lorenzo.
For the Public Ministry, the chief prosecutor Juan Agustín García will intervene in the oral debate together with the legal assistant Guadalupe Inaudi and the agent Héctor Moncada. While the investigation of the case was in charge of the prosecutor María Eugenia Titanti and the legal assistant Bruno Miciullo.
In the dock of the accused will be Juan Carlos Monsalve, Enzo Monsalve and Julio Maximiliano Zapata as “co-authors”; Alejandro Chianese as “necessary participant” and Ana María Perales as “instigator”.
The five remain in preventive detention for the crime of “Threely aggravated homicide for having been caused with treachery, with the premeditated concurrence of two or more people and for having been perpetrated by men towards a woman in the context of gender violence”.
“They went out to hunt her as if she were an animal”
“It is a classic example of objectification of a person,” says the plaintiff attorney
Lawyer Diego Vázquez, plaintiff in the jury trial that begins this Tuesday of five accused of the femicide of Agostina Gisfman, committed in 2021 in the Neuquén town of Centenario, assured that this case “is a classic example of objectification of a person without the least interest in life and its dignity”. Vázquez represents Agostina’s husband (22) and their little three-year-old daughter in the judicial process.
“Here there is no motive for the fact that could justify such a degree of cruelty and disregard for the life of a person,” the plaintiff attorney told Télam. “If there is an example of objectifying a person and treating them as a thing, it is this; they went out to hunt her as if she were an animal and like a predator,” he said.
Vázquez maintained that “it is impossible to understand what Agostina could have done or been involved in to justify this level of violence” and “It is unintelligible to ordinary people what the mobile could be.”
For the lawyer, “the investigation was very good and fast”, which he considered fundamental in this type of case because “after a while it is much more complicated to be able to know what happened”. He also stressed that the jury will participate in the debate “ordinary people who will decide which of the versions is more acceptable based on the evidence we present at trial.”
“We understand that there is enough material to prove it from the prosecution and from the complaint”added Vázquez, who recalled that, if found guilty, the defendants would be sentenced to “life imprisonment.”
The femicide that shocked the Alto Valle
According to the indictment, The femicide was committed on May 14, 2021, around 8:00 p.m.
The investigators reconstructed that Juan Carlos Monsalve met Agostina in March 2021 through Chianese, whom he had asked to contact him with a woman who provided sexual services.
In mid-April, Juan Carlos Monsalve had a conflict with his wife, the defendant Perales, when this woman discovered some photographs in which Agostina was with him. Faced with that situation, Perales began to demand that her husband kill the young woman and told him that if he didn’t, he would break the relationship.
On May 11, and as Juan Carlos Monsalve had not complied with what he had asked, the defendant left the house where they both lived and went to the town of San Javier, in the province of Río Negro. For the prosecution, that was the reason why the husband finally organized a plan to assassinate Agostina.
So, Juan Carlos Monsalve contacted Chianese to make an appointment on May 14, 2021 at the access roundabout to the city of Cipolletti in Rio Negro, with the excuse of having a new sexual encounter with the victim.
The first of the defendants went to look for her, he took her in a vehicle to a remote area of the Neuquén town of Centenario and together with his nephew Enzo Monsalve and a friend, Zapata; presumably they killed her with two blows, set her on fire and left her body in the place, where it was found a day later.
At the time of her murder, Agostina lived in Cipolletti with her partner and their young daughter; and her remains could be identified through an expert report from the Neuquén Police Department of Criminalistics, with information from the National Registry of Persons (Renaper).
In turn, after confirming the identity of the victim, organizations of the feminist collective held a march in Plaza San Martín de Cipolletti to demand justice. While Ten days after the body was found, investigators arrested the first two suspects.
With the evolution of the investigation, The investigations obtained a series of audio messages from the accused which turned out to be incriminating evidence against him.
“I have good news for you: we found this person. We already know everything more or less, where he is staying, where he is living. The only thing we have to do is wait for him to find him when he leaves, look for the right moment,” he was heard saying. to Chianese in one of the audios incorporated into the cause and that transcended on social networks. Investigators believe that in that message she was talking to Juan Carlos Monsalve.
“The issue is whether you are going to do it at work or I end up doing it with the people who are giving me a hand, but it’s already located, Carlitos,” Chianese said in another section of the conversation.
