How will the Vélez players serve their house arrest in Tucumán and when will goalkeeper Sosa be free?

The case against the Vélez players Sebastián Sosa, Abiel Osorio, Braian Cufré and José Florentín Bobadilla Last night had a crucial chapter. The judge Eliana Gomez Moreira In the first minutes of this Thursday it was decided to release the Uruguayan goalkeeper pending trial, while his three teammates were placed under house arrest.

Osorio, Cufré and Florentín Bobadilla must comply with the measure for 90 days and must do so in the province where the incident occurred and where the alleged victim – a 24-year-old sports journalist – filed a complaint. Vélez players (whose contracts were suspended by the club) They must establish an address in Tucumán, cannot be held in hotels, hostels or residences. They will have to rent or buy a house.

Furthermore, the three players must wait to be assigned electronic devices (an ankle bracelet) so that the authorities can track them and thus prevent any escape attempt.

On the other hand, It was decided to release Sosa and he was allowed to return to his home in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.. The goalkeeper will be banned from leaving the country and will have to appear periodically at a police station to prove he is still involved in the trial.

In this sense, Judge Moreira established that the four defendants, before accepting these conditions, They have to cover a bail of 50 million pesos. And once the players meet all the requirements, Sosa will be released (although he will continue to be charged as a secondary participant) between this Thursday and Friday, and the other three will leave the former Investigative Brigade where they have been housed since Monday evening. in the state of “arrested” he remains locked in the house, according to La Gaceta.

According to reports, other Vélez players who were in the concentration camp in Tucumán before and after the match against Atlético will be called to testify during the trial and the judge wants to prevent the defendants from meeting with their teammates to “put together a common story that he exonerates them.

Furthermore, in the resolution read by judge Moreira, it was specified that the four footballers They will have a restriction on leaving the country and come within 400 meters of the area where the complainant is located. All this while the investigation of the public prosecutor Eugenia María Posse.

A marathon hearing with a lot of tension

The day in the Tucumán Courts was characterized by intense activity that kept everyone in suspense. Under a heavy security deployment, the four Vélez players arrived at Fuero Penahe capital of this capital on Wednesday at midday faces a future whose destiny seemed already written. Cufré, Osorio, Florentín and Sosa got out of a van with their heads covered in T-shirts, while a crowd of onlookers carefully watched their every move. It was previously reported that the victim would follow the bail hearing virtually.

A few minutes later, family members and lawyers took to the stage, displaying an atmosphere full of tension and expectation. Among the first to arrive was Stephanie Correa, partner of the Uruguayan goalkeeper., who entered protected by the defense lawyer Ernesto Baaclini. Then, the arrivals of Camilo Atim and María Florencia Abdala, lawyers of Bobadilla, followed by José María Molina, Eliana Bataglia and Ernesto García Biagosh, legal representatives of Cufré and Osorio.

Around 2pm, when the public prosecutor Eugenia María Posse maintained the accusations raised since the beginning of the trial, the hearing began. Posse called for Cufré and Florentín to be charged with aggravated sexual abuse with the participation of two or more people; That is, the prosecutor accused them of having been the complainant’s rapists; While Sosa was identified as a secondary participant of the same crime. On the other hand, Osorio will face charges of simple sexual abuse. The MPF deputy spent almost two hours reading the evidence she had taken into account to support the accusation against the Vélez players.

All afternoon, The four players also had the opportunity to give their version of events behind closed doors (the victim had requested the presence of the press through his representatives, but this did not happen). It was the first time they spoke because they could not keep the promise they had made earlier because they had been arrested. While not the full details of their statements have been revealed, the athletes have categorically denied the allegations against them.

In the secrecy with which the hearing took place, in a brief contact with the press, Iliana Bataglia, one of Osorio’s defense lawyers, tried to distance her client from the case and ensured that between the player and the victim “There were only a few kisses”. Furthermore, he underlined towards the complainant: “If you analyze the cameras, you can see her walking normally and even putting a t-shirt in the backpack she was wearing. In the Chamber Gesell said that in the Uber she was afraid of dying, supposedly unconscious. She pointed out that he was like that too when he sent the messages to Sosa.”. In closing, the lawyer explained that his client was in room 407 because it was the one he had been assigned to sleep with the doorman Sosa.

A fact that also emerged during the hearing is that, at the headquarters, Sosa was separated from his colleagues by three police officers after rumors had circulated of an altercation between him and Florentín during their transfer from the former Investigative Brigade (where they had been detained since Monday), even going as far as grabbing each other by the neck.

However, His lawyer Baaclini denied the attack. “It’s all a lie, I don’t know who made it up all at once.”he summarized. “The position of the police officers (surrounding Sosa) was casual, the idea was to try to accommodate the accused behind each defender”.

What was striking during the hearing was that a new element emerged that attracted a lot of attention. Could there have been a fifth person involved? Confusion erupted near the courtroom when details of a video submitted as evidence by one of the defense were revealed. According to judicial sources, in the audiovisual material The presence of a fifth player would have been observed in room 407 of the Hiltonwhere the event would have occurred.

According to information, this player, whose identity has not been revealed, he would have left the room a few minutes after the young woman entered and moments before the alleged abuse. The purpose of presenting this evidence was to question the version of the victim, who stated that only four football players were present when they entered the room. Ernesto Baaclini, Sosa’s lawyer, however, completely ruled out this hypothesis.

After all these elements and after a fourth interval, the moment of truth has arrived. Towards the end, the public prosecutor Posse again requested pre-trial detention for three months for the four defendants and the complaint agreed with the proposal of the representative of the Public Prosecution. Then, the athletes’ defenders expressed their reasons and rejected the request. It was at that moment that judge Eliana Gómez Moreira had the last word and, on the basis of the arguments put forward by the accusers and defenders, decided that three of the four players will continue their preventive detention at home.