For a little less than two years Pablo Peralta, from Rosario in the western zone, was involved in especially resonant crimes. It was a short interval, but each case in which he intervened made the front pages of the newspapers. A trial proved that he was personally in charge of a sequence of attacks on pharmacy owners by order of a businessman in the field, José Iborra. In one of those intimidations that occurred against a doctor in the middle of the center when fleeing He executed a police officer who tried to stop him with bullets. Previously tried to kill the criminal lawyer Alberto Tortajada at the door of his study, in front of the courts. He shot him four times at point blank range, although the professional, who was left with physical injuries, saved his life.
Last week, at a court hearing, Peralta asked to be transferred to home prison, for suffering from lupus. This is an inflammatory disease that occurs when the immune system attacks its own tissues, which is characterized by inflammation of the affected organs, such as the skin, liver, heart, brain, or lungs. It is an incurable but not deadly disease.
The hearing took place in Santa Fe before Judge Lisandro Aguirre. Peralta was represented by the lawyers Gustavo Feldman and Marcos Peiretti who requested house arrest through their medical staff. Prosecutor Karina Bartocci objected. In the end, an 81-year-old man asked to speak.
It was Tortajada. Twelve years earlier, on September 17, 2012, Peralta met him in the shield of the Montevideo 2016 building, where the lawyer had his legal study. Someone had called the lawyer to request an appointment for a relative accused in a drug case. Tortajada went to have a coffee at the bar on Montevideo and Balcarce to kill some time. As the time for the meeting approached, 6:00 p.m. that day, he received a new call to his cell phone and went to the studio. A man was waiting for him at the door of the building.
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“Are you waiting for me?” Asked the criminal lawyer, knowing the new client he had to attend to. And the visitor responded with another question: “Are you Dr. Tortajada?” The lawyer opened the door of the building and heard the metallic sound when the weapon was mounted and before he turned around, the assailant began shooting at him from less than two meters away. One of the bullets hit him in the shoulder blade causing a fracture and lodged in his chest. He also received two bullets in the right arm. The assailant’s gun jammed which prevented him from continuing to shoot. Tortajada was admitted and operated.
Last week Tortajada returned to see the man who, according to the sentence that convicted him, tried to murder him. “If he has an illness, it’s not wrong for him to ask for a benefit. But first he has to prove it. There is nothing to prove it,” said the lawyer.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2017 after an oral trial for a saga of attacks on pharmaceutical merchants that included threats against a doctor, the murder of a police officer, and the attempted murder of a criminal lawyer.
Peralta’s claim is that the Santa Fe Penitentiary Service informs if he can be given adequate care for his illness inside a prison unit and if, as a result, he can continue staying there or not. Sergio Larrubia, Tortajada’s defender, presented a letter in which he says that the forensic doctor Sebastián Amut indicated on February 9 that at the time of the evaluation that he carried out “there is no impediment to staying in his place of detention.” He also indicates to the doctor that the tests indicative of the presence of lupus refer to normal values.
A study by a doctor named Bernasconi indicates symptoms of Lupus disease and refers to nephritis or Renal Lupus. “We have the best references from Dr. Bernasconi but he is a general practitioner. This ailment requires a biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. Let the study be done. We do not deny the possible existence of the ailment. But it has to be properly proven“, he indicated.
Tortajada said that in the reports the defense indicated that Peralta suffers from Belanophobia, which would be a fear of needles, necessary to practice a kidney puncture Determine your ailment. In this regard, the veteran lawyer, who spent weeks in Heca to recover from the attack, slipped a scathing note. “He is afraid of needles, but not so much of the firearms that he has known how to handle.”
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Judge Aguirre rejected the defense’s request for house arrest for Peralta. And he ordered the Penitentiary Service official about the chances of providing adequate care to the inmate and whether or not he can continue under the sphere of that unit.
In 2017 Peralta was tried for the attack on Tortajada. Also for another incident of February 5, 2013 in a clinic on February 3, 1045 where the doctor Omar Ulloa attended, owner of the FarmaVip chain. Two men who showed up with a plant as a gift beat him up, stole two cell phones, and threatened him. When they left, they ran into the policeman Carlos Dolce, who was guarding the block in civilian clothes and when trying to stop the thieves he was stabbed and shot.. Dolce died from the injuries received. The attackers were Peralta and Hernán Núñez. They were sentenced to life, in addition to other attacks linked to the pharmaceutical industry.
