MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands' war: Argentine officers face charges from veterans

More than twenty Malvinas war veterans from the Argentine northern province of Corrientes with the support from the local Human Rights Office have gone to court claiming human rights abuses and even killings by their own officers during the armed 1982 conflict between Argentina and Great Britain.

The charges were presented in a federal court in Tierra del Fuego requesting "an inquiry into the alleged crimes of serfdom and torture, followed by serious injuries and homicide", confirmed the Corrientes Centre of Malvinas Veterans. Corrientes Human Rights Commission Deputy Secretary Pablo Vassel said the case was presented in the city of Rio Grande and includes charges from 23 different former soldiers, conscripts during the conflict of 1982, which ended with Argentina ousted from the Falklands in June 14, a quarter of a century ago. In an interview with the local press Vassel said that among other charges it includes the staking of soldiers to the ground, and deaths because of lack of food and torture, allegedly perpetrated by Argentine "officers and petty officers". Federal Judge Cecilia Incardona in Rio Grande received as evidence of the accusations ten video cassettes, documents in DVD format and over 200 pages of statements from former Corrientes conscripts who give names of the alleged criminals or responsible for the criminal actions. Former soldier German Navarro accuses a Sergeant Rito Potillo of having fired at and killed, with his FAL rifle, in the Falklands a solider from the town of San Luis Del Palmar. An Argentine Marines Infantry officer is accused of having staked several conscripts for having killed, desperate for food, a sheep while in the Falklands. In another case, apparently Remigio Fernandez died of inanition in Port Howard because Argentine officers did not deliver food or supplies. Vassel said the charges are formalized 25 years later because during "all this time the necessary guarantees were absent" in the legal system, given the pardon and other legislation supporting the military which kept them immune from court actions. Charges were presented in Rio Grande because "that's the jurisdiction of our Islands (Malvinas) and it's a way to ratify our sovereignty over them", said Orlando Pascua one of the leaders of the Corrientes Centre of Malvinas Veterans.