MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas Veterans appeal to UN Human Rights Rapporteur, the case on abuses committed by Argentine officers

The case dates back to 2007, filed at the Federal Court of Rio Grande, with 130 military officers charged, only three prosecuted and fifteen under investigation

A grouping of Malvinas Veterans have requested the United Nations to inquire about the delays in Argentina's Judicial branch on the case of torture and human rights abuses by Argentine officers against private soldiers during the 1982 Falklands war.

Malvinas former Combatants from La Plata made the presentation before UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Swiss Professor Nils Melzer.

The case dates back to 2007, and has been filed at the Federal Court of Rio Grande, with 130 military officers charged, only three prosecuted and fifteen under investigation, waiting for a ruling from the Argentine Supreme Court.

The highest court in Argentina must decide whether inhuman punishments as those suffered by many conscripts during the Falklands war are crimes against humanity, and if so, do not prescribe, nor the criminal action against abusers.

Then young conscripts, they claim Argentine military officers had them staked to the ground, no matter weather conditions, buried, beaten and other abuses. Let's not forget the war took place during austral winter months in cold windy Islands..

“We have decided on a new appeal path, this time with the UN”, said Ernesto Alonso, Human Rights chair of the grouping which argues the victims are exposed to “another vulnerability stress situation” of their human rights.

The lawyers for the petitioners said the request to United Nations demands, “it assesses how the Argentine state has been acting, since following on the Judicial branch, it has ignored for four decades the obligation of investigating the torture and inhuman treatment crime”.

Last March an association of Malvinas Veterans organizations under the umbrella of a Memory Commission marched up to the Tribunal's Palace demanding an answer from the Supreme Court.

In May 2021, in a divided vote two members of a Federal Appeals Court ruled against investigating while the third member supported inquiring into the human rights violations during the Falklands war.

The two member majority referred to a ruling from another court in 2009, which also rejected that abuses against humanity were committed against rank and file in 1982, and thus were ordinary crimes. This allowed an Army officer to evade sentencing and return peacefully to his home given the forty years since the alleged abuses were committed.