2023-06-11 05:13:28
On April 14, the calm was disturbed in the small Santa Fe town of Gálvez, where less than 20,000 people live. There was an extortion kidnapping of those that there are practically no more: the victim was a young man with a disability, the captors asked for a million-dollar sum of ransom money and finally released him without charging a peso. The kidnappers were neighbors of the victim and relatives of each other. One of the alleged members of the gang was a civilian employee of the Argentine Army.
Franco and Uriel Q. were the first to fall. They are 35 and 36 years old. Ten days following the incident, personnel from the Anti-Kidnapping Department of the Federal Police arrested them following a series of raids in Gálvez and San Lorenzo. There are two pieces of evidence that compromise them: their cell phones and a car.
According to the evidence collected by the investigators, the telephone devices of the brothers and the victim hit the antennas in the same area where it was determined that the young man was held captive for regarding twelve hours. The victim, who has a disability and is insulin dependent, recognized the house where he was held, in Pueblo Andino, a commune of less than two thousand inhabitants located regarding one hundred kilometers from Gálvez.
The young man also mentioned the car where he was intercepted and transferred. It was a gray Ford Focus with a luggage rack, police sources reported. That accessory was found by investigators at that Andino property when the search was carried out last week. It is believed that the defendants removed it following the fact to make it difficult to identify them.
But the investigation did not end there. Jonatan P. was arrested last week at the 603 Arsenal Battalion in San Lorenzo. He is a 40-year-old man who worked as an administrative employee for the Argentine Army. Detectives determined that he would be the owner of the house where the victim is believed to have been held between midnight on April 14 and noon that same day.
According to what the investigators of the North Anti-Kidnapping Department of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) were able to establish, a telephone line interacted with the two brothers accused of the act. But it was also established that Jonatan P. was present “at least for a period of two hours in the vicinity of the house at the time of the kidnapping,” the website Fiscales reported. Security cameras would also locate him in the area.
Brothers Q. and Jonatan P. are brothers-in-law. The latter is in a relationship with one of their sisters. Uriel and Franco share photos together on their social networks and show a close relationship. “Partners like when we were kids, in games, batons and some other fights,” said part of Franco’s post to Uriel for his birthday. In addition, both have images playing rugby at the Jorge Newbery de Gálvez club.
Kidnapping. The victim left the bar where she works by bicycle to go to her house, in Gálvez, a town in the Department of San Jerónimo located 80 kilometers from the provincial capital and 120 kilometers from Rosario.
But at one point she was intercepted by a gray Ford Focus. Two men threw him to the ground to reduce him, tied him up, covered his head with a hood and forced him to get into the vehicle, police sources said.
The parents of the 27-year-old boy only found out what had happened at 6:40 in the morning when they received a call from the victim’s cell phone. But it was not his voice, but one of his captors asking him for US$200,000 to free him. Money that the family did not have.
Immediately, the family made the complaint to 911 and the rescue operation was activated, headed by the federal prosecutor Jorge Gustavo Onel and the Federal Police. After a series of negotiations, the captors reduced the amount and changed currency. Now they were asking for 5 million pesos.
But finally, the young man was released without the ransom being paid. They abandoned him in Ricardone, a rural area between the town of San Lorenzo and Andino, near the home where he was held. In the first quarter of the year, four kidnappings for extortion were registered throughout the country (see separate) and this was the only one in Santa Fe.
The brothers were prosecuted in the case for having “abducted, retained and hidden” the young man to collect the ransom, a situation that is aggravated by the fact that the victim is a person with a disability and for having caused him minor injuries. And, as PROFILE was able to learn, the prosecutor asked that Jonatan P. follow the same fate and be prosecuted with preventive detention for this fact.
Now it is in the hands of the Federal Court of Santa Fe No. 1, in charge of Reinaldo Rodríguez, to resolve his procedural situation.
A criminal modality in decline
Kidnappings for extortion decrease year following year. So far in 2023, four criminal acts of this modality have been recorded. One of them occurred in the Santa Fe town of Gálvez, when a young man was intercepted by two men who reduced him and forced him to get into a vehicle. They held him captive for 12 hours and contacted the victim’s family to release him following paying a ransom, which ultimately did not materialize and the boy was released unharmed.
According to the latest report from the Fiscal Unit Specialized in Extortive Kidnappings, the lowest number of cases since 2015 was recorded in the first four months of this year. “The average number of reported events was one per month, less than the 2.25 of the year past,” he explained. One occurred in Santa Fe and the remaining three in Buenos Aires.
2015 was the year that recorded the most cases of kidnapping for extortion (294) and from then on the number began to decline. In 2020 there were 48, in 2021 there were thirty and last year there were 27.
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