Argentine rugby: waiting for the trial of the assassination of Federico Martin Aramburu

A black “Justicia por Fede” t-shirt worn by the Pumas and the clubs with the apprehension of a “very hard” moment to live: Argentine rugby has its eyes turned towards Paris where the trial of the assassination of Federico Martin Aramburu opens on Monday, eager for justice for an act which still four years later “does not enter into the head”. During the warm-up of their match against Australia, Saturday in Mendoza, the Argentine XV wore this t-shirt flocked with the number 13 of the former center with 22 caps, who fell in 2022 in Paris after a futile argument under the bullets of a former ultra-right soldier.

A tribute repeated during the matches of the URBA championship in Buenos Aires, with special emotion at CASI (Club Atletico San Isidro), Martin Aramburu's youth club. His friends, former teammates, smile spontaneously, laugh while recalling anecdotes, the memory of “Fede”, whom they describe as radiant, always smiling, “very good friend of his friends”. Which he never failed to see again when he returned twice a year to Argentina.

But Saturday was “a day to laugh. A demand for justice with all the seriousness it deserves,” CASI coach Oscar Murgier, 45, undoubtedly one of the Argentinians closest to Martin Aramburu, explains to AFP. With him, literally at his side since he also played center or winger, Oscar played at CASI since the age of 5-6. Fede was its captain before he left for Europe and professional rugby in 2004, at the age of 24. “The reality is that we are approaching a very difficult month,” confides Oscar, “while the verdict is expected on September 25. We start to feel a knot in our stomach thinking about what will happen at the trial, and because beyond everything, Fede will not come back, nothing will give Fede back to us. But yes, there will be justice.”

The mobilization on Saturday aimed “so that, faced with a possible attempt to minimize the seriousness of what happened, society remembers what is going to be judged: the assassination of a 42-year-old man, father of three children, whose life was snatched away” in a crime “marked by violence, hatred and extremist intolerance”, indicates a press release on behalf of family, friends and the community of Argentine rugby which remains a secondary sport in the country, but a small united world. The Argentine Federation (UAR) also expressed in a press release “its support for the demand for justice” for Martin Aramburu.

Disbelief, incomprehension. The same words come back to everyone, when they recall that morning of March 19, 2022, when they learned, a few hours late, the news of the death of their friend, riddled with bullets on a Parisian boulevard. “The first hours were very shocking and afterwards, when you confirm what happened... I still can't believe it, really: the bad luck he had to come across these people, capable of achieving this fatal gesture, even today, it doesn't enter my head,” breathes Lucas Borges, a 46-year-old ex-international, also close to Martin Aramburu with whom he played in the 2007 World Cup in France.

“I lived in Paris for three years (playing at the Stade Français, Editor’s note), and in reality it’s a city where I always felt very safe. So when I was told what had happened, I couldn’t print,” he adds.

Even if his tone tenses when mentioning the “crazy people” who are going to be judged, Oscar Murgier, like others, does not wish to advance any expectation, any wish for this or that sentence, at the trial which begins on Monday. “What for you would be justice, for me perhaps is not, for others yes, etc... I just ask that there be the greatest, the best possible justice,” he said, weighing his words.