Municipal workers from the La Plata party found a missile this Thursday while doing “unsettled” tasks in the town of Los Hornos and the federal Justice is investigating whether it is the same artifact stolen in 2015 from the Armored Cavalry Squadron 1 of Aranafor which this Friday morning will have the skills carried out by the Army and the Buenos Aires Police.
The investigation is in charge of the federal judge of La Plata Alejo Ramos Padilla, who since Thursday afternoon instructed the proceedings, which included taking statements until late at night.
The magistrate commissioned expertise from the Explosives Division of the Buenos Aires Police and the Arsenals Division of the Army based in the city of Boulogne and ordered that the results be in his office in the provincial capital this Friday at 9 a.m., judicial sources informed Télam.
Ramos Padilla has already established that it is a missile and seeks to determine if it was stolen in 2015 from the Army facilities in the town of Arana in La Plata, when the current head of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), Agustín Rossi, was minister of Defense of the Nation.
Likewise, it seeks to establish if the device “was in the place where it was found from the moment of the missing -if it is verified that it is the stolen missile-, or if it was placed (‘planted’) recently,” the sources said.
For it, It is also trying to determine if there are images from security cameras in the area.
Meanwhile, sources close to the former minister indicated that if it is confirmed that the weapon found was the one stolen in Arana, “what Rossi said at that time about the robbery will be ratified.”
The spokespersons added to Télam that “when the missile was stolen, 9mm ammunition and FAL (Light Automatic Rifle) ammunition were available to those who committed it, which were not stolen despite the fact that they were easily sold on the black market, which shows that it was a political operation”.
Also, the sources recalled that the official “reported the incident and presented himself as a plaintiff in the case”and highlighted that on that occasion the then minister asserted that “the TOW 2 missile that was stolen from the Armored Cavalry Squadron 1 of Arana is not operational”, since it lacked its launcher to be activated.
about the find
The discovery occurred while Workers carried out the tasks in the vicinity of a property of the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences of the National University of La Plata (UNLP), in 167 between 68 and 69.
Daniel, one of the people in charge of the group that was carrying out the work, said: “We were moving off the banks for the municipality, and when you move off the banks, mountains of earth are made; then we were loading it on a truck to dump it in the quarry, and when we put the machine It came out. For us it was a submersible bomb or a piece of iron, but when we got it off the truck, we found a missile.”
“We were all surprised. We called the Police, the Los Hornos (municipal) delegate; they immediately came, told us it was a missile, they separated us, and thank God it didn’t happen to majors, because if we had pressed it with the machine, we would have all flown,” he asserted.
“We were ten people, three trucks, two machines… we could have all flown,” the worker told the La Plata newspaper Hoy and also confirmed that he had to testify before the judicial authorities for this situation.
According to sources close to the case told Télam, the projectile has a metallic label that indicates “Guided Missile Surface Attak Bgm-71e-4b Natl Stock No.1410-01-370-2288”.
After the discovery, the Fiscal Unit 15, in charge of Cecilia Corfield, and Judge Ramos Padilla intervened.
The sources said that in the court “they became aware of the fact around 4:00 p.m. and a half hour later, the judge went to the place, closed the streets to protect the neighbors and people who were on the site, a first safeguard of the material was made. , the data on the missile was taken and then the other steps were taken, such as taking statements”.
