MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Legal actions against Argentine officers who tortured conscripts during Malvinas war
Nobel Peace Perez Esquivel will also be at the presentation The Buenos Aires Provincial Memory Commission, CMP, will present on Monday an appeal to the Argentine Supreme Court demanding that tortures and other ill treatments suffered by the Argentine conscripts during the Malvinas war by their own officers be considered ‘crimes against humanity’ and therefore imprescriptible.
“The question of the Malvinas war cannot be disassociated from the regime that produced it: the military dictatorship (1976/1983). Nor its illegal methods in the continent from those applied in the Islands”, said the Commission.
The CMP representatives including Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel are scheduled to attend at midday Monday the Tribunals Palace in Buenos Aires to make an Amicus Curiae (Friends of the Court) presentation in the case of human rights violations committed by Argentine officers during the Malvinas war
The initiative supports a recent request from the Criminal Chamber Prosecutor Javier De Luca who asked the Argentine Supreme Court to rule if tortures and other abuses denounced by Argentine soldiers against officers during the war must be considered crimes against humanity of war crimes.
The presentation includes almost a hundred cases involving Argentine Armed Forces officers, but the investigation was paralyzed once the Annulment Chamber argued that the crimes had prescribed.
Among the claims are cases of staking soldiers to the ground, deaths caused because of lack of food and even killings.
Last week President Cristina Fernandez received the ‘Rattenbach Report” which analyzes the political and military responsibilities of the Malvinas war. Originally elaborated after the conflict by a commission headed by General Benjamin Rattenbach, it was considered too crude and damning towards the commanding officers and then military caretaker president Reynaldo Bignone impeded its release.
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rules-
-
-
Read all commentsIt is good that the officers involved are being held to account - but you still get the sense that it is part of an effort by the Argentines to disassociate themselves from culpability for the conflict. When are they going to prosecute those that randomly dropped landmines from helicopters or other actions where the victims were not Argentines?
Mar 26th, 2012 - 08:23 am 0that dictatorship has done more damage than can ever be repaired.
Mar 26th, 2012 - 08:27 am 0What is just as alarming is that no one in developed world opposed it in '76! In fact, it was welcomed, especially by the USA, given that it was a understood as being a 'functional' regime in some alleged war against communism.
Now, I am not sure it was 'functional' to those alleged US interest . However, what I do know for sure is that that dictatorship has cut a rift in Argentine society and left scars that might never heal comletely.
I agree that crimes committed by Argentinian military personnel against anyone, including each other, during the time of their illegal and immoral occupation of the islands in 1982 are a matter for the Argentinian authorities to address. They were not crimes against humanity, though, they were just good old fashioned crimes.
Mar 26th, 2012 - 08:44 am 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!