Micaela Ortega’s femicide changed gender: what is her prison situation like

Jonathan Luna, convicted of murdering, robbing and attempting to abuse 12-year-old Micaela Ortega in 2016filed several formal pleadings alleging that She perceives a woman and is now called Joana. He is currently detained in Florencia Varela serving his life sentence and asked to go to a women’s pavilion.

The request was formulated through a habeas corpus presented by the Buenos Aires Committee Against Torture -and supported by its defense-, as reported to telam María Fernanda Petersen, lawyer for Mónica Cid, Micaela’s mother. Given this, the minor’s family will formalize a written complaint because they were not notified of this news, taking into account what is stipulated in the victims’ law.

Since August of last year, Luna has already appeared in the legal case as “Joana”, confirm sources from the Criminal Court No. 2, which in 2017 he was sentenced for the femicide of the girl, which he is serving in Penal Unit No. 32 of Florencio Varela. “The case was rebranded based on a resolution of the Court of Cassation, in another case, due to the gender identity law and at that time her transfer was arranged, not to a women’s prison, but to a transgender ward. Since that date (August) we have not had any more claims,” ​​they explained to telam.

consulted by PROFILE, Mariano Przybylski, national director against institutional violence, said that “in the federal system there are specific pavilions for trans people and if the gender is changed while they are detained, they are transferred to the pavilion that corresponds to them because of their self-perceived gender.”

How was the murder of Micaela Ortega

Micaela Ortega was murdered in April 2016 after being deceived through social networks by Jonathan Luna. He was sentenced to life in prison in Argentina’s first trial for grooming followed by death.

The girl lived in Bahía Blanca and left her home on April 23, 2016, never to return. Luna had contacted her through Facebook with a false profile through which she posed as a girl the age of her victim. Micaela’s body was found a month after her disappearance after the author’s confession, that there was where he had hidden the body.

This man was a fugitive from Justice, he had escaped in 2014 during a temporary exit for a conviction for qualified robbery in Río Negro.

On October 19, 2017, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. in a historic trial since it was the first for grooming followed by death in Argentina.

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