The murder trial of Cecilia Strzyzowski has entered its final stage. After the popular jury declared Cesar Sena guilty as the perpetrator and his parents, Emerenciano Sena and Marcela Acuña, as primary participants in the aggravated murder, the three main defendants took the floor in the final session to insist on their innocence and question the verdict. For its part, the prosecution requested a life sentence for Sina and actual penalties for his three aides.
Marcela Acuña was the one who spoke the most and the only one present in the room. He thanked the judge “for the humane treatment” and referred directly to the accusation. She said the jury’s conviction was “truly disgraceful by all standards” and asserted that her husband was sentenced to life in prison “for something he did not do and for a largely unverifiable audio recording and an audio recording that has nothing to do with life imprisonment.”
Cesar’s mother asserted that Emerenciano was a “social leader” and was seen as “a protester and not as a person with rights” and linked the outcome of the trial to “the media authority.” He also stated that “if someone agrees to convict an innocent person, he is a sick person like what happened with Cecilia,” and asked the judge to take into account “Emerenciano’s situation.”
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Acuña understood that the decision taken upset the “balance of justice” and accused the prosecution of “spreading lies” and “concealing very important issues related to the context of violence.” In addition, she again questioned the popular jury, saying that she had never trusted this system because of the “influence exerted by the media” and concluded by requesting that she not be transferred away from the Resistencia. “What I want is to be with my son, with my old father who is my partner, with my little granddaughter who is 9 years old, with my daughter Paula,” she said, warning that even in prison she “will not stop being a leader, a leader is born.”
Emerenciano Senna spoke much less. But in the same vein. “I agree with everything I heard and what my defense presented,” he said via Zoom from his place of detention, and immediately asked to stay in the same place because “this is the closest place of residence for my family, friends and acquaintances.” He also stated that the transfer “would be tantamount to a death sentence.” His speech ended with a phrase he repeated twice: “Do not forget that I am an innocent condemned man. This is the only thing of which I am absolutely certain, that I am an innocent condemned man.”
Cesar Sena, whom the jury identified as the physical author of the women’s murders, spoke for the first time, although he did not say much. He avoided pointing out the truth and confined himself to accompanying the strategy of his defenders. “I stand by everything my defense has expressed, and I reserve all relevant appellate resources,” he said. Like his parents, his request focused on the place of confinement: he asked “not to move his current place of residence” because “his whole family lives in the city, which is all I have.”
Before the defendants’ statements, prosecutors Juan Martin Bojado, Jorge Cáceres Oliveira, and Nelia Velasquez supported the request for sentencing of the defendants.
Bojado noted that the jury declared Cesar Sena liable for “murder doubly aggravated by bond and committed through sexual violence” and that it considered Emerenciano Sena and Marcela Acuña as primary participants. He pointed out that Cecilia’s crime “was not an isolated event but the product of planning” and that the family combined a “pretext” with an alleged trip to the south to deceive the victim and those close to her. “They killed her, burned her, and believed that her power would make them go unpunished,” he summed up when justifying the request for life imprisonment for the three.
The prosecutor highlighted the damage to Cecilia’s family, mentioned the “pact of silence” which, according to the prosecution, they tried to maintain until the trial, and demanded life imprisonment for Cesar Sena, Emerenciano Sena and Marcela Acuña for premeditated murder.
In the same appeal, the prosecution requested that Fabiana Gonzalez and Gustavo Obregon be sentenced to effective imprisonment of five years and ten months for aggravated concealment. He stressed that their behavior “went beyond” an isolated act and that they “devoted themselves to seeking impunity” for the Sina family. As for Gustavo Melgarejo, Public Prosecutor Jorge Cáceres Oliveira asked for two years and ten months in prison on charges of simple concealment, considering that he “was responsible for monitoring and controlling the fire” in a Russian field and cooperated in “eliminating all evidence.”
In conclusion, the Public Prosecutor’s Office demanded that the death of “Cecilia Strzyzowski” be registered in the civil registry “and that it was a murder of women” and requested an arrangement for the delivery of “the skeletal remains and property found of the victim to her family.” Judge Dolly Fernandez announced that she would call for a new hearing in the coming days to read the ruling, within the legal time limit.