Leonardo Alonso Killed His Daughter Federica: In Uruguay Who Police’s The Police?
LEONARDO Alonso, 52, tells police he thought his daughter Federica was a burglar – that’s why he shot her dead.
Alonso was at his home in Montevideo, Uruguay.
His house is in a wealthy area of town. Also, Federica was engaged to the son of Juan Pedro Penarol, president of Uruguayan football team Penarol.
The family make a tempting target for burglars. Indeed, just one month earlier, three men had forced Federica to open the front door. Once inside, the burglars tied up Leonardo and his son, Leonardo Junior. The villains escaped with valuables and cash.
So. To protect him and his family, Leonardo went and bought a handgun. The result of that – and of what the family says is the police’s inabilty to deal with criminals – led to Federica’s death.
It’s is a tragic story.
Says Gustavo Guidobono, director of a local association fighting to control the use of guns:
“This tragedy shows weapons are for police, not people. Many people who possess guns are not properly prepared and we have these terrible consequences.”
Here’s what Amnesty says about Uruguay in 2009:
A law in Uruguay that has allowed the police and military to get away with torture and murder should be annulled, Amnesty International said on Monday, as the country prepares to vote in a referendum on the future of the law.
The law — Ley de Caducidad de la Pretencion Punitiva del Estado, or Expiry Law – prevents the prosecution of police and military officials for crimes committed until 1985, covering the eleven-year period of military and civilian rule when thousands of cases of torture and many disappearances were documented.
That referendum failed. The law stood.
The civic-military regime that took over in June 1973 inaugurated a twelve-year long reign of fear, which combined economic mismanagement with political terror. Uruguay no longer was the “exception” of the region, it having earned by this time another ‘appropriate’ tag as the Torture Chamber of Latin America, due to the brutality of its human rights repression.
In the Southern Cone, the Uruguayan regime most closely resembled a totalitarian system, as the country’s small size and population permitted penetration into both public and private lives. Military rule achieved unprecedented physical control of the country; each citizen was even classified as A, B or C according to political reliability and the possible threats to the state. The regime installed a culture of fear, characterised by inxile – a desire to hide and not be seen by the omnipresent state.
The current situation:
According to the Organization of American States, Uruguayan President Julio Maria Sanguinetti intentionally created the Expiry Law in 1986 to prevent the State from prosecuting and punishing members of the military and police responsible for human rights violations during the period of the military dictatorship. Sanguinetti was determined to cover up the abuses of his party, the Colorado Party, which has been silencing the opposition since the 1950s… In April 2011, the military successfully won a vote by congress to not repeal the law.
That is the climate in which Federica Alonso came to be killed. Still think only the police should carry guns in Uruguay..?
Posted: 1st, December 2011 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
