The brutal torture and murder of two young women and a girl, broadcast live on Instagram, rocked Argentina on Thursday, where investigators suspect punishment killings by narco bosses.
On Wednesday, the bodies of Morena Verdi, 20, Brenda Del Castillo, 20, and Lara Morena Gutierrez, 15, were found at a property in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires.
They were tortured and murdered live on Instagram, in a broadcast watched by 45 members of a private account, the security minister for Buenos Aires province, Javier Alonso, told a press conference on Wednesday evening.
Alonso said that four people were arrested over the murders, but local media reported Thursday that the number had risen to 12.
The victims had been missing for five days.
Alonso said that they were lured into a van on Friday night in the La Tablada neighbourhood, about 20 kilometres south of Buenos Aires, under false pretences.
“They were falling into a trap created by a transnational drug trafficking organisation that had concocted a strategy to murder them,” he stated.
Their bodies were found in a house in Florencio Varela, about an hour southeast of La Tablada.
Alonso said the killings appeared designed to “punish the girls” for a purported violation of the gang’s code and to serve as a warning to other members.
According to preliminary forensic analysis, the victims, who investigators say had ties with leaders of the gang in the commercial Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Flores, were murdered on the day they disappeared.
Police discovered the Instagram broadcast after one of the detainees revealed it under questioning, Alonso said.
The minister said that, as they were tortured, the gang leader allegedly said: “This is what happens to those who steal drugs from me.”
An arrest warrant has been issued for the suspected gang boss, who is aged around 23 and is nicknamed “Little J” or “Julito,” Alonso stated.
When asked about the possibility that the victims were murdered for stealing drugs, Alonso replied: “Anything is possible.”
On Wednesday night, several dozen people demonstrated in Flores and La Tablada over the killings.
Writing on X, Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof said: “Drug trafficking knows no borders or jurisdictions, and it also employs all forms of sexist violence.”
Political and social organisations have called for a march on Saturday in central Buenos Aires under the slogan “There are no good or bad victims; only femicides. No life is disposable.”
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