Judge Yalj shrugs off opposition calls for his impeachment

San Martín federal judge Juan Manuel Yalj ratified that railway union leader Rubén “Pollo” Sobrero remains a suspect in the case investigating the burning of several trains in the Sarmiento line and assured that he will decide whether he will be indicted or not in ten days.

The judge also said that he has no reason to apologize to Sobrero. “For the time being, I don’t see why I should,” Yalj said, regarding his decision to arrest him only to release him a few days later. 

“The investigation regarding the burning of the trains remains active,” he explained.

He acknowledged, however, that suspicions on Sobrero’s hiring of a man named “Leo” in order to burn the trains down “has diluted for now.” 

Yalj assured that, since his office assured that they always look to “treat suspects well,” Sobrero must have assumed that he was trying to apologize. “For the moment, I don’t see any reason to do so,” he said.

“We will handle this case the same we handle all cases. Sometimes, when a case is notorious, it’s a little hard for us to handle them,” he explained. 

Regarding some sectors in the opposition calling for the judge’s impeachment, he replied that “they have every right to do so,” although he assured he always acts in good faith.

“Avoiding dealing with a controversial case is never the solution because in that case we would be bad judges,” he warned. 

In the last few hours, Yalj had to remove Federal Police investigators from the case and replaced them with the Secretary of Intelligence (SI) officials.

Judicial sources reported that his decision was triggered after he detected several “mistakes” in the investigation.