(PERIODISTAS/IFEX) – On 23 December 2002, former province of Buenos Aires police chief Alberto “La Liebre” Gomez was sentenced to life in prison after being found responsible for laying the necessary groundwork for the kidnapping and murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas. Cabezas, a photojournalist for the weekly “Noticias”, was found murdered on 25 January […]
(PERIODISTAS/IFEX) – On 23 December 2002, former province of Buenos Aires police chief Alberto “La Liebre” Gomez was sentenced to life in prison after being found responsible for laying the necessary groundwork for the kidnapping and murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas. Cabezas, a photojournalist for the weekly “Noticias”, was found murdered on 25 January 1997 in the city of Pinamar.
On 2 February 2000, the Dolores Federal Criminal Court, in the province of Buenos Aires, had convicted those primarily responsible for Cabezas’ murder. The court ruled that businessman Alfredo Yabrán asked his head of security to carry out the murder. Yabrán was perturbed that Cabezas was investigating him and had obtained information and photographs that no other journalist had managed to acquire. During the trial, it was determined that the assassins had been assisted by other individuals. One of these individuals was Gomez, the head of the Pinamar police department at the time.
Almost two years later, the same court stated that the former police chief was guilty of “an attack on an individual leading to death, and constituting homicide” by his role as a key participant and “his failure to fulfill his duty as a public official”. The court considered that Gomez “provided the criminal enterprise with indispensable co-operation without which [the murder] would not have been carried out as it was,” because “he was able to ensure impunity for the group and later attempted to hide responsibility for it through the measures he used.”
Cabezas’ parents hugged and cried upon hearing the verdict. They were both pleased with the sentence, but noted that there are more people responsible for their son’s murder. “I had little strength when I was listening to the accounts [of the murder]; I felt worn down. We are both broken-hearted, have aged beyond our years and are sick. But we know there is more to it, there were many people involved in his murder,” said Norma Cabezas, the journalist’s mother.
