Andrea Viera

Abstract

On May 10, 2002 Andrea and her boyfriend Gustavo got off the bus in Florencia Varela (a district in Gran Buenos Aires) because Andrea was not feeling well. They went and sat on a small wall to rest a little bit. Just before, around 9.00 p.m., on the corner of the street, a burglary had taken place at a butcher shop during which one police officer was injured and one criminal was killed. The other criminals escaped and a large scale police operation to find them commenced. Andrea and her boyfriend had no idea what was going on when two patrol cars stopped in front of them and the police officers started screaming, “They are here, and she’s injured!”. They were handcuffed while Andrea kept on saying that they did not commit a crime. She had some difficulty getting up and walking because she did not feel well; so the police officers grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the police car. Both Andrea and Gustavo had their personal identification cards with them. So if there was some suspicion that the two youths were wanted for having committed some previous criminal act, the police could have resolved the matter right there instead of taking them to Police Station 1° of Florencia Varela. Once they arrived at the station, the couple was separated. It soon became clear that the police officers wanted to blame someone for the hold-up and for the injured officer. Andrea and Gustavo were tortured to make them confess to the crime and sign a document as proof of their confession. Gustavo heard Andrea screaming for several hours because of the beatings she received by approximately ten different officers, including women. Suddenly she stopped screaming. Gustavo was also tortured and beaten up by different officers, but he was later protected by one officer who told him that no one would beat him up while he was around. In the morning, Gustavo was released because there were no charges against him and he asked about Andrea. “She is in the hospital for some medical research”, the officers told him. Gustavo went to the hospital and found his girlfriend in coma. At 12.15 a.m., Andrea had been admitted to the hospital. She died ten days later. The autopsy later proved that the cause of death was manual asphyxiation. In June 2006, her case was tried. Of the five officers being tried, four were acquitted of charges and one, a female police officer, was sentenced to life imprisonment for torture but will serve the sentence at home due to heart problems.