Help needed, Daniel Nicoletti (KDE developer) unexpectedly arrested

1. I think you need to format it as 2. numbers followed by periods.

Edit: Nope, just make a new paragraph with two line breaks.

So I don't know the situation but as an American living in Argentina for 5 years I can say a few things about how traffic accidents work here.

So, say you are making a legal left turn on a one-way street, onto another one way street, and a motorcycle flys around you ON THE LEFT from behind and doesn't see you turning, and plows into you. (Incidentally, all motorcycle drivers do this here - if you visit, don't drive until you understand the alternate "physics" of driving in South America.) In this case, even though you were in front, you signaled, you were in the leftmost lane, etc, a number of things will happen in the resulting police investigation and inevitable court cases (remember i'm sort of 'americanizing' the situation - the exact law and actors are slightly different but this is essentially what happens):

First, you will get sued by the motorcycle driver in civil court for multiple hundreds of thousands of pesos, probably at least $150k US. Second, you will get sued in criminal court (possibly by the "DA") with a crime - in fact it's possible both of you will, but let's assume in this case you have a job as a software developer like Daniel and the other guy is working for much less. In this case the suing will be mostly from the low-wage earner to (potential) high-wage earner. It is a near-guarantee, that though the high-wage earner did not do anything wrong, they or their insurance will pay a significant amount of money to the low-wage earner to settle the civil case. The fact of the matter is IT DOES NOT MATTER what happened in the actual traffic accident - it DOES NOT MATTER if you were or weren't at fault.

Now the cases will take possibly a year or longer and that means while they're going on, you're essentially an indicted criminal with multiple cases hanging over your head. If you travel or leave the country, etc, you may have a hard time - if you're an Argentine - leaving. I know people who have had to get a judge's permission to travel in this situation.

It's very possible, in fact, likely that the detritus of these court cases is hanging around and it has NOTHING to do with anything that David did, but the bureaucracy of Argentina sort of 'caught up' with him here in an odd way. Thank God they move so slowly most of the time - the number of absurd Kafkaesque situations like this is immense here mitigated mostly by institutional inefficiencies. However in this case I would guess that this is somehow the situation.

> David's daughter died over two years ago in an car accident where another driver is at fault.

That's certainly not clear from the article. It says "On the way, a car suddenly stopped on the road. To avoid a collision, Daniel tried to dodge the car, which then collided with a truck".

I don't think you can infer from this who was at fault. If that car ahead was traveling in the same direction as he was before it stopped, then in many jurisdictions he would be at fault for following too close. You are supposed to stay far enough behind to stop safely no matter what the car ahead of you does.

It is odd that it would take this long for them to come after him, though, if that is what it is about. It usually doesn't take long in this kind of accident to figure out who is at fault and whether or not an arrest is warranted.

My guess is that it will turn out it is just a mistake. I'd expect that they were told not to leave the country until the investigation was complete, and due to some error (maybe on the police's part, maybe on their part), either they or the police ended up with a wrong notion of whether or not the travel restriction had ended. Result: they ended up leaving the country while the police thought they were still under orders to stay, and so they got reported to Interpol as fugitives.

As far as I understood the article, David had this accident in Argentina and the local authorities are investigating the matter.

Daniel then left the country, going back to Brazil.

Presumably -- but this is pure speculation on my part -- they asked him to return, in order to answer questions, and he declined.

Argentina issues an international arrest warrant, so they can interview him.

Daniel travels overseas, immigration at the airport scans his passport, the arrest warrant pops up.

Everything from that point is purely automatic.

This may be too late, but from the discussion in /r/argentina [1], what I gather is that both parties were cited by the judge for investigation (for involuntary manslaughter). Since David left Argentina, the judge assumed a flight risk and he ordered an international warrant for his capture(to continue the investigation).

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/argentina/comments/13260b/argentina_...