They sentenced the members of a gang that kidnapped two families in a country to 14 and 15 years in prison

The federal justice of La Plata sentenced to 14 and 15 years in prison four people who in March 2016 entered the Israelite Zionist Center Scholem Aleijem Bialik (Cissab), a country of the Jewish community located in Tristan Suárez, in the Buenos Aires town of Ezeiza, and kidnapped two families who had dinner in one of the houses. Among the victims were three minors, one of them with autism, which was regarded as an aggravating factor for convictions. In addition, they must compensate the victims with 7,500,000 pesos.

Judicial sources informed Infobae that the verdict was handed down yesterday by Federal Oral Court 2 of La Plata, which sentenced Sebastián Garay to 14 years in prison and Marcelo Proz, Maximiliano Montenegro and Carlos Padilla Ardohain to 15 years.

Judges Alejandro Esmoris, Enrique Mendez Signori, Nelson Jarazo considered all four as co-authors of the crime of extortive kidnapping aggravated by the collection of ransom, by the number of participants, by having been committed against three victims under 18 years of age and by one of them suffering from spectrum disorder autistic and also for robbery aggravated by the use of firearms, whose ability to shoot could not be proven, and for having been committed in the village and in a gang.

The trial began in December last year and the complainant lawyer who represented the victims, Daniel Straga, had asked that they be sentenced to 20 years in prison and prosecutor Hernán Schapiro to 18 years.

The incident occurred on the night of March 20, 2016, when Julián Rubinska, his wife and two children were having dinner with a married friend and their son - with autism - at their home in Cissab. Three armed and hooded men entered the country and reached the house. They violently demanded money and items to take away from them. They made seven thousand pesos, a watch, cell phones and wedding rings.

But they demanded more, under the threat that they were going to be kidnapped. “I chose who we took, your wife, your children?” , they told Rubinska. “Take me,” he replied. One of the victims said that there was $50,000 in a relative's house. The criminals decided to take all seven to get that money.

They went out with the two families of hostages in a van that was in the house by the front door of the country without security noticing anything. A few blocks later a car with the fourth offender was waiting for them and they divided the hostages. Rubinska, the wife of the other married couple and their son left in the van to get the money. The abductees were going to stay with the other four hostages until they got the money.

The ransom was paid at kilometer 32 of the Ezeiza-Cañuelas highway. It was about 00:15, three hours since the kidnapping began.

The band was arrested in September 2018, two and a half years after the kidnapping. For that, four pieces of information were key that the victims set aside: the noise of a cell phone, the neglect of a name, a tattoo and the resemblance of one of them to the footballer Ángel Di María.

The victims said that the hijackers sounded a “prip” like that of Nextel phones. With that, the investigators tracked the telephone antennas in the area, took the registered numbers of that company that hit the night of the kidnapping and analyzed who they were from. This is how they reached two people with criminal records and began to investigate them. They found them - their cell phones appear on country antennas and where the ransom was paid - and then with the rest of the band.

There appeared the other data that the victims removed. They said that in an oversight one of them called another by the first name: Marcelo. Also that Marcelo had a tattoo on his left leg and that one of the victims could recognize. That's what he did.

The four defendants were identified in reconnaissance rounds. And one of the victims gave the football data. “It's the one we pointed out as Di María. He's the one who ran everything. He was the first of the abductees to enter the house, he was the one who spoke to us and threatened us, and the one who led the rest, gave the orders to the gang,” he said in comparison with the features of his face with the football player Di María. It was Proz.

Two of the convicts - Montenegro and Padilla Ardohain - were declared repeat offenders for previous convictions. In addition to prison sentences, Federal Oral Court 2 of La Plata sentenced the four defendants to compensate the victims with 7,500,000 pesos. The judges will give the basis for their decision next Wednesday.

I KEPT READING: