MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bs. Aires mayor faces impeachment

This capital's mayor was suspended Monday after the municipal legislature voted to subject him to impeachment proceedings for alleged negligence with a deadly nightclub fire in December 2004.

Anibal Ibarra was suspended without pay, said the president of the Buenos Aires assembly, Santiago de Estrada.

Legislators voted 30-7 with six abstentions to proceed with impeachment, after an intense debate that began on Thursday and had to be postponed until Monday due to the tense atmosphere generated by protesting relatives of the victims of the fire at the Cromagnon Republic nightclub.

A total of 193 persons, most of them young people, died in the fire, which erupted in the packed night spot when someone in the crowd shot off some flares during a band performance.

The victims' relatives, who gathered near the legislature and were surrounded by dozens of police, broke into applause, singing and tears of emotion when they learned of the impeachment trial for Ibarra, whom they blame for the tragedy.

The mayor's impeachment trial was called for in June by a legislative investigative commission, which accused him of malfeasance.

When presenting his defense to the legislature in September, Ibarra, who became mayor of Buenos Aires in December 1999, said that the investigative commission falsified evidence and manipulated witnesses' testimony to accuse him.

While the trial lasts, the capital's deputy mayor, Jorge Telerman, will assume Ibarra's duties.

The fire broke out on the night of Dec. 30, 2004, when someone in the crowd attending the rock band Callejeros' concert fired flares into the nightclub's cloth-draped ceiling. At the time of the incident, the club had exceeded its admission capacity, its municipal license had lapsed, it lacked basic security measures and its emergency exits were blocked.

The criminal case has so far led to 25 indictments, with those charged including club owner Omar Chaban, the Callejeros band members, government and city officials and members of the police.