(Buenos Aires 17jul2027) Javier Millei has jailed political opponents, and tomorrow an important action will take place to release them.
Rally for the freedom of Milton Ptolemy and Aeneas Gallus, arrested for protesting regressive reform of Javier Millei
The Coordinating Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners has called for an open assembly Saturday, July 18, at 11:00 AM at the former clandestine detention center El Infierno (Hell) – located at 12 de Octubre 234, Avellaneda – to bring together “the broadest possible political spectrum” to strengthen the campaign for the release of Milton Tolomeo and Eneas Gallo, who are being held in pretrial detention at the disposal of the federal courts after participating in the mobilizations against the austerity policies and labor reform promoted by the government of Javier Milei.
ANDAR at the protest
(Agency) “Milton and Eneas have been in Marcos Paz prison for three and four months, respectively, and Milton spent a month before that in the notorious Sigpplar (Comprehensive Management System for High-Risk Inmates) at Ezeiza prison,” Eva Laura del Rosario, Tolomeo’s partner, told ANDAR. “This pretrial detention order makes no sense whatsoever because they can’t organize an escape or obstruct the process, and on top of that, the trial hasn’t even been scheduled,” she added.
For Del Rosario, “in a country where a woman dies every 31 hours at the hands of people who did have criminal records and who had been reported for gender-based violence, in a country where there are people from different administrations who are being prosecuted or who have proven crimes on their record, it is completely unjust that these two fellow workers, who are precarious workers, have been held in pretrial detention for so long and without reason.” For this reason, and now in an organized manner, she said they are demanding their immediate release. “We organized this plenary session to join forces and call for a large demonstration in August for their freedom. Milton Tolomeo and Aneas Gallo must be free, and their cases must be dismissed immediately.”
Since the implementation of the anti-protest protocol, in its capacity as the Local Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture, the Provincial Commission for Memory has been denouncing the systematic repression of public demonstrations and the criminalization of protest. During the three days of debate on labor reform, the CPM recorded at least 754 people injured and 51 arbitrary arrests, including those of Gallo and Tolomeo. According to information obtained by this agency, Tolomeo is unharmed and getting along well with the other inmates in his cellblock, but he greatly misses life with his partner when he is free. He misses his cat and his 12-year-old daughter. Gallo is also in good condition. Following Tolomeo's arrest, on February 26, lawyer María del Carmen Verdú filed a habeas corpus petition denouncing "the unprecedented conditions of detention at Federal Penitentiary Complex 1 (Ezeiza), since, by the sole, discretionary, and arbitrary decision of the Ministry of Security, he was housed in Module 6, designated for 'high-risk' inmates, as if he were a dangerous international terrorist, even though the court itself, in ordering his pretrial detention, flatly rejected the prosecution's request to apply the aggravating circumstance of 'terrorist act' provided for in Article 41 quinquies of the Penal Code and limited itself to charging him with common crimes." Tolomeo was held incommunicado, without visits, and isolated with only four hours of yard time. “We cannot allow prisoners to be held ‘like Bukele’ or in Guantanamo-like conditions in our country,” Verdú, one of the founders of Correpi (Coordinator Against Police and Institutional Repression), had denounced. Only on March 19 was Tolomeo transferred to the Marcos Paz prison, now as a common prisoner. A massage therapist, first responder, and founder of the Lanús Neighborhood Assembly, he had been arrested in the early morning of February 15. He participated in the pensioners' demonstrations on Wednesdays in front of Congress. Meanwhile, Gallo, a precarious delivery worker, was arrested on March 18 “as a result of an ideological sweep on social media (cyber-patrolling),” in an operation that sought to identify “people with baldness,” so his arrest would have been the result of arbitrary targeting. Both are charged with throwing incendiary material at the police fence surrounding Congress during the crackdown on the protest against the passage of the Labor Reform on February 11.
Existential Threat to the Republic
In an interview with ANDAR, lawyer Siro Soto, Gallo's defense attorney, stated that "Federal Prosecutor Carlos Stornelli has decided that no article of the Penal Code is too harsh on the February 11th protesters, because he seeks to prosecute those who were protesting against the 'labor servitude law' under a barrage of charges: assault against authority, resisting arrest, public intimidation, and incitement to violence." Soto pointed out that "as if this weren't enough, he's adding aggravated damage and injuries, ensuring that the case carries more weight than Congress itself." The lawyer added that "that's not all" because "the prosecution's most creative move is the attempt to frame two precarious workers who are struggling to make ends meet as an existential threat to the Republic."
Soto drew a parallel with the defense being mounted by the Lawyers' Guild, an organization he belongs to, of Mapuche leader Facundo Jones Huala. “Not wanting to be outdone by the federal prosecutors in Patagonia, the same methods used to punish Jones Huala and all the lies we exposed in La Gremial's statements are now being applied in Buenos Aires, and will become commonplace.”
Gallo's lawyer argued that "Stornelli speaks quite freely about a 'possible organized group' and illicit association, suggesting that the objective was nothing less than an uprising against the constitutional order. According to this narrative, the exercise of social protest, a constitutionally guaranteed right, is actually a master plan to impede the free exercise of Congress's powers. It's madness."