International warrant issued for main suspect, also railway union worker
Court sources said Díaz was arrested in the Greater Buenos Aires locality of Adrogué. The sources said Díaz — who has ties to the leader of the railway workers union José Pedraza — is suspected of having headed the group that ambushed and shot the activists after the protest.
Sources said more arrests could be made in the next hours. Judge Susana López had ordered the arrest of three suspects, all of them members of the Unión Ferroviaria railworkers union, on Friday night.
The judge also issued an international arrest warrant for the main suspect, who was identified yesterday as Cristián Favale, an alleged hooligan gang member of the the second division soccer club Defensa y Justicia.
According to sources close to the investigation, Favale was pointed at by the witnesses who testified before the prosecutor that he was one of the people who shot Ferreyra during Wednesday’s protest. Sources said Favale was linked to the Unión Ferroviaria railway workers’ union after a series of raids conducted by the Border Guard at two houses in the Greater Buenos Aires district of Florencio Varela.
Judge López, in charge of the investigation, also ordered a 10-day period of court secrecy as requested by prosecutor Cristina Caamaño.
Meanwhile, Nelson Aguirre, one of the activists wounded during the incidents, confirmed yesterday he was unable to identify his aggressors in a series of images shown to him by the Judge late on Friday.
Ferreyra was shot dead during a demonstration of left-wing organizations in support of outsourced workers from the Roca railway line when they were confronted by a group of alleged railworkers’ union activists who ambushed them in the Buenos Aires city neighbourhood of Barracas. Two other people were wounded in the incident, including a woman who remains in hospital in critical condition.
Yesterday, Aguirre also criticized the work of the Federal Police during the incidents, as he claimed during a radio interview there were patrol cars and police trucks that “could have prevented the ambush.”
Also yesterday, dissident Peronist officials criticized the ruling party for accusing former president Eduardo Duhalde of being implicated in Ferreyra’s murder.
Several pro-government organizations linked Duhalde to the attack and compared the murder to the deaths of picket activists Maximiliano Kosteki and Darío Santillán in 2002, when Duhalde was in office.
Senator Hilda “Chiche” González de Duhalde, the wife of the former president, considered such comments as “miserable” and accused the pro-government sectors of “trying to take advantage of the death of a youngster.”
Dissident unionist Luis Barrionuevo, also a close ally of Duhalde, agreed with the latter’s wife and considered as “stupid” the statements linking the dissident Peronist leader to Ferreyra’s death.
