MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine spy granted war veteran status after long legal battle

A.C. had provided intelligence services at the Ushuaia naval base

A 65-year-old Argentine woman known by the initials A.C., who claimed to have performed intelligence duties during the 1982 South Atlantic conflict against the United Kingdom, has been granted war veteran status after a legal process that lasted several years because navy records showed she was assigned other duties, Mar del Plata's La Capital reported this week.

Under the legal sponsorship of attorneys Claudia Brizzio and Roberto Sugrañes, a court found that the Mar del Plata native and resident had provided intelligence services at the Ushuaia Naval Base and was now entitled to all the benefits of her new category after being listed as a “master builder” by the Navy.

According to a 2018 psychiatric report, A.C. suffers from PTSD “post-traumatic stress disorder” because, at the age of 24, she received the survivors of the ARA General Belgrano, sunk by a British torpedo.

The woman is also said to have attempted suicide three times after being threatened to drop her claim, despite having an honorary diploma from the Navy for her services. In 2013, she was granted half of a war veteran's pension by court order to address the “state of destitution” in which she found herself.

It would take another decade of legal battles before she would be “included in the list of war veterans for the purposes of the regulations that grant her the status and the full benefits requested,” the federal appeals court found when upholding an earlier ruling that the State had challenged.