Ferreyra murder: Pedraza accused as ‘instigator’ of homicide

The Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), one of the plaintiffs in the inquiry into the assassination of Mariano Ferreyra, a Workers Party activist who was shot dead during clashes between outsourced Roca train line workers and Railway Union (UF) members over two years ago, accused former UF head José Pedraza of having been the “instigator” of the crime.

Representing Beatriz Rial, Ferreyra’s mother, CELS put forth the same accusation against the UF’s second-in-command, Juan Carlos Fernández, and added that the motive was to “lecture” outsourced workers of the Roca line who were implementing a plan to protest in demand of full employment.

In a well attended court session at Comodoro Py, Buenos Aires province, marking the beginning of the pleading stage, CELS lawyers Alberto Bovino and Maximiliano Medina presented their extensive argument with video and photographic evidence against the former union directors, along with other union members, railway workers and seven policemen, with the latter group standing accused of having “liberated” the Barracas area to facilitate the murder.

Bovino and Medina “contextualized” the events of October 20, 2010, with the former arguing Pedraza handled at least two cooperatives that were in charge of the outsourced railway workers, and that this was “a business he proliferated.”

“The outsourcing in Operative Emergency Railway Management Unit (UGOFE) proliferated and the union, far from supporting the demand by outsourced workers, wanted to dissolve the conflict and argued the protests were carried out by persons alien to the railway,” Bovino affirmed.

Medina continued by asserting the motive of the crime was also to “maintain political hegemony within the union, and conserve economic power through this manner of contracting, outsourcing.”

According to the prosecution, the former UF leader and Fernández “arranged the summoning” of union members through “delegates from the Remedios de Escalada workshops,” and dismissed the union leaders’ claim they had sought to avoid the blocking tracks by summoning themselves as a “façade.”

Last night it was revealed that CELS requested life imprisonment for 14 out of the total 17 indicted suspects for their involvement in the murder, including Pedraza.

Herald with Ambito.com