In a morning charged with tension and demands, provincial deputies of the Left Unity Front (FIT-U) Christian Castillo and Mónica Schlotthauer stood before the Guarantees Court No. 3 of Bahía Blanca to demand the release of Mariela Agunin, a worker who has been imprisoned for over two months in the Saavedra prison for a crime that her loved ones consider absurd persecution: having sold just 7 grams of cannabis.
The conference, held on Friday, July 3, brought together family, friends, union and human rights leaders, as well as members of candombe groups. All agreed that Mariela’s case is an example of excessive punitiveness that plagues the popular sectors, while real drug traffickers walk free.
“We need to change the drug law,” Castillo fired, visibly outraged. “It has a concept of penalizing the consumer that court rulings have rendered ineffective, but the law remains in force, and prosecutors who want to make headlines use it to persecute people like Mariela.” The deputy recalled that 13 officers raided her home a year and three months after her initial arrest, destroying her self-built mud house. “Anyone who knows her story knows she has nothing to do with the accusation,” he added.
For her part, Schlotthauer was blunt: “There should be no more prisoners for cannabis.” The deputy compared the situation to that of prosecutors convicted for drug trafficking cases who did not even spend a night in jail. “Why such cruelty against the popular sectors?” she asked.
Mariela Agunin, an agricultural technician and tireless worker, was arrested for “aggravated drug trafficking” after selling 5 grams of cannabis to a friend in Plaza Rivadavia and giving her another 2 grams. Prosecutor Mauricio Del Cero, nicknamed “the gray bud,” is seeking a sentence of 6 to 20 years. Cell phone forensic analysis showed that two months earlier she had sold another 5 grams to another friend with a valid Reprocann. For each transaction she received 35,000 pesos, a ridiculous sum that the prosecutor considers “profit.”
Mariela used medicinal cannabis to treat her insomnia, with a medical prescription, but her certificate had been pending for nearly two years due to state responsibility. Her brother Santiago described her as “destroyed”: “She is medicated with quetiapine and clonazepam, she can’t sleep, she is going through a torment.”
The deputies presented a bill in the Buenos Aires Legislature requesting her release and questioning the judicial process. After the conference, they visited her at the Saavedra prison, where Mariela told them about her thwarted work projects: she wanted to enroll in the Agricultural Education Center and work in wind farms. “Her life is that of a working woman, not a drug trafficker,” they emphasized.
The College of Social Workers of Bahía Blanca and the Chair of Education and Human Rights of the UNS expressed solidarity with the cause. Meanwhile, the city continues to see serious drug trafficking cases that go unpunished, while a woman is imprisoned for seven grams of cannabis.
Para mí esto es una cagada, Mariela es presa política y el estado burgués la tiene encanada por 7 gramos mientras los narcos de verdad se pasean. Me parece que hay que romper todo hasta que la suelten, abajo el sistema carcelario del capital. ¡FIT-U carajo!
para mi estos zurdos de mierda defendiendo a una narco por 7 gramos son unos vagos encima diputados vayan a laburar la delincuencia se combate con mano dura no con lloriqueos a la Agunin que le caigan 20 años me parecen pocos Argentina no necesita proftas necesita ordern @Juan_Arg