The federal judiciary imposed preventive detention on the driver of a truck loaded with more than three and a half tons of marijuana, which was intercepted by the National Gendarmerie during a routine check last Monday in the city of Paso de los Libres.
The indictment was formalized by acting federal prosecutor Aníbal Fabián Martínez and deputy prosecutor Mirian Benítez of the decentralized financial center Paso de los Libres, during a hearing to formalize the investigation and detention control before the guarantee judge Gustavo del Corazón de Jesús Fresneda.
The defendant, identified by his initials CJB, 35 years old and originally from Misiones, was charged with the crime of transporting narcotics, a crime punishable by prison sentences ranging from 4 to 15 years. At the request of the prosecutor, the judge confirmed the legality of the detention and ordered preventive detention for a period of 65 consecutive days until February 11, a date which he also set as a deadline for the preparatory criminal investigation.
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This is the second investigation officially opened by this financial center since the entry into force of the Federal Code of Criminal Procedure in the jurisdiction on December 1, which introduced the adversarial system and transferred the management of the investigation to the Ministry of State.
As outlined in the hearing, the proceedings began at approximately 7:20 p.m. On Monday, employees of the Paso de los Libres road department of the National Gendarmerie stopped a truck with a semi-trailer at kilometer 480 of National Road 14. The vehicle was transporting wooden panels from Santo Tomé, Corrientes, towards the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
During the inspection, a drug detection dog responded to the lower portion of the cargo, resulting in judicial intervention and the vehicle’s transfer to the Paso de los Libres cargo terminal complex. There, a non-contact scanner revealed the presence of hidden packages among the declared goods.
With court approval, members of the 7th Gendarmerie Squadron conducted an extensive search of the truck and found 3,695 packages of marijuana with a total weight of 3,577 kilograms. The conclusive test confirmed that it was cannabis sativa and the driver was arrested at the scene of the accident.
In justifying the application for preventive detention, the public prosecutor’s office stated that due to the seriousness of the incident, the expected punishment and the inability to prove the defendant’s origins, there was a risk of absconding and a risk of hindering the investigation. Judge Fresneda agreed with these arguments and denied the defense’s request for freedom.
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