A police officer was convicted after an abbreviated trial for not having prevented his colleagues from torturing Jorge Gatica, a 36-year-old man who in January of this year had been detained for not paying for some chorizos from a store and two hours later was found murdered with "fifty injuries" in a cell at the police station in the Rio Negro city of Cipolletti, judicial sources reported this Saturday. In the case, four other officers, identified as Sergeant Vilmar Alcides Quintrel (30), First Corporal Jorge Luciano Sosa (28), First Sergeant Andrea Carmen Henríquez (35) and First Corporal Walter Denis Carrizo (33), wait be tried as co-authors of the crime of "torture followed by death." Judicial sources reported that the assistant officer Gastón Alexis Moraga (35), who was on duty the night of the incident, admitted his guilt in an abbreviated procedure for failure to comply with the duties of a public official and for not having prevented his colleagues from torturing the victim. victim. "The importance of the conviction lies in the fact that the incident took place in a public institution, by police officers who should have protected Gatica's integrity, but they beat him and caused him suffering until his death," lawyer Rubén Antiguala told Télam. , representative of the victim's family. In his statement, the accused described the moments of Gatica's arrest in public and explained that when he returned to the unit he remained inside his office. He mentioned that the accused police informed him that one of his uniformed colleagues was hitting the fatal victim and that, due to this situation, he would change the person in charge of the detainee's custody, although he clarified that he had no information about the seriousness of the attack. On this point, Moraga said that despite learning that the detainee had been injured, he did not initiate internal actions or report what happened to his superiors. During the hearing, the accused apologized to the victim's family who was present and accepted that as a provincial police officer he should have done so. The man described the moments in which Gatica was taken to the hospital, when his death was confirmed and the hours after what happened.