Monday 22 December 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
ARGENTINA:
Controversy Over Court
Order to Release Rights
Abusers
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES (IPS)
- An Argentine court
order to release on bail
nearly 20 officers
accused of committing
human rights abuses
during the 1976-1983
dictatorship shows the
slow-moving justice
system’s limitations in
dealing with cases
against those prosecuted
for crimes against
humanity, say activists.
The decision was handed
down Thursday. But an
appeal has already been
filed by prosecutors and
admitted, which means
they cannot actually be
released until the
Supreme Court rules on
the matter.
The order for the
officers’ release was
based on the number of
years they have spent in
prison without a
sentence.
It drew harsh statements
from the government of
Cristina Fernández. The
president herself said
the court decision was a
"disgrace.
The decision also came
under fire from human
rights groups that have
been working for over 30
years to bring to
justice those
responsible for the
"dirty war" against
dissidents, in which
30,000 people were
forcibly disappeared,
according to activists.
The head of the
Grandmothers of the
Plaza de Mayo, a leading
human rights group, said
it was "outrageous," and
"clearly demonstrates
that the justice system
wants impunity" for
those accused of human
rights abuses.
The Grandmothers, the
Centre for Legal and
Social Studies (CELS)
and other local human
rights groups issued a
statement questioning
the legal system’s
capacity to effectively
handle the roughly 800
cases that have piled up
in the courts since the
amnesty laws were
annulled.
The two amnesty laws
approved in the
mid-1980s put an end to
trials against military
human rights abusers.
But in 2001, the courts
began to declare the
laws unconstitutional in
legal rulings, and in
2005 the Supreme Court
finally annulled them.
"Since cases began to be
reopened in 2001,
neither judges nor
prosecutors, with very
few exceptions, have
shown skill and agility
in the investigations,
which have dragged on in
an unreasonable manner,"
says the human rights
groups’ statement
protesting the court
ruling.
The resolution was also
criticised by Justice
Minister Anibal
Fernández, who said it
was "one of the worst
and most conservative
decisions taken by the
judiciary."
Supreme Court Justice
Carlos Fayt accused
legislators of blocking
laws that would speed up
the trials. But the
lawmakers who have
opposed such initiatives
say they could become
obstacles to guarantees
of due process.
By a two-to-one vote, a
three-judge panel in
Argentina’s highest
criminal court, the
National Criminal
Cassation Chamber,
ordered the release of
nearly 20 officers held
since 2003, based on the
three-year time limit
for holding suspects in
pretrial detention.
The judges said in their
decision that local
jurisprudence and
international
conventions set time
limits for pretrial
detention to protect the
rights of suspects. But
the dissenting judge
said the prisoners in
question should remain
behind bars because of
the gravity of the
charges they face.
"The court decision
shows that in Argentina,
the justice system has
not been purged, and
that functionaries from
the times of the
dictatorship are still
active," human rights
lawyer Mónica González
told IPS.
In 2007, González and
other lawyers involved
in the human rights
cases presented a report
to the Council of
Magistrates -- which
oversees the judiciary
-- criticising the
National Criminal
Cassation Chamber for
delays in human rights
cases.
Then President Néstor
Kirchner (2003-2007)
also lambasted the
Chamber last year,
accusing it of delaying
the course of justice by
accepting endless
appeals and legal
maneuvers by the defence
lawyers representing
those accused of human
rights violations.
The human rights lawyers
who presented the report
last year said the
Chamber was a bottleneck
slowing down human
rights cases.
They also said the
judges sitting on the
Chamber, many of whom
are close to former
members of the
dictatorship, had eased
their normally strict
criteria for releasing
suspects on bail when it
came to members of the
military facing charges
of human rights
violations.
González said "We
presented the report,
but the Council of
Magistrates has it in a
drawer. All it achieved
was to give a final
shove to push out
(Alfredo) Bisordi," the
former president of the
Chamber, who had called
a victim of human rights
abuses a "terrorist
criminal."
Since the widely-criticised
Bisordi stepped down, he
has dedicated himself to
acting as defence
counsel for people
accused of torturing and
killing opponents of the
regime.
With respect to
Thursday’s order to
release the prisoners,
González said "the
decision to release a
suspect on bail is
strictly based on the
laws in the case of
common crimes, but here
we are talking about
people accused of
genocide and crimes
against humanity."
Crimes against humanity
are covered by
international
conventions that have
been incorporated into
the Argentine
constitution, and which
state that those accused
of such crimes should
not be entitled to
release on bail, she
said.
"Nor can it be supposed
that the detainees will
cooperate with the
justice system, because
they have never done
so," she remarked.
The most high-profile
officer whose release
was ordered Thursday is
former Navy captain
Alfredo Astiz, who
worked in intelligence
in the Navy School of
Mechanics (ESMA), one of
the dictatorship’s most
notorious torture
centres.
Astiz, who has been
dubbed the "Blond Angel
of Death", infiltrated
the group of relatives
of the regime’s first
victims of forced
disappearance, in 1977.
Posing as the brother of
a victim of forced
disappearance, Astiz,
under the name of
Gustavo Niño, attended
the meetings of the
women who later founded
the Mothers of the Plaza
de Mayo human rights
groups, and accompanied
them on their weekly
walks around the Plaza
de Mayo square in front
of the presidential
palace, in which they
demanded to know what
had happened to their
sons and daughters.
His intelligence work
led to the kidnapping
and disappearance of
Azucena Villaflor, one
of the founders of the
group, and French nuns
Alice Domon and Leonie
Duquet. Astiz was
convicted in absentia in
France in 1990 in the
case of the two nuns.
He also faces charges in
the deaths of a
17-year-old
Swedish-Argentine girl,
Dagmar Hagelin, and
journalist Rodolfo
Flash, among others.
Hagelin’s father Ragmar
said in Sweden that the
order to release Astiz
and the others was "a
slap in the face for the
Argentine people."
He said legal
instruments and benefits
should be used very
differently in the case
of crimes against
humanity, and added that
the dictatorship’s
justice system had
clearly not been purged. |
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