Lawyer Paul Vasselcomplainant in the legal case for torture of soldiers during the Malvinas war, repudiated this Sunday and described “perverse” the editorial published this Sunday by the newspaper The nation “Malvinas and human rights”, where the ruling that ignored such complaints was described as “healthy”.
“It’s an act of extreme perversion that he is unaware of the seriousness of the events that took place in Malvinas and that he wants to perpetrate the impunity for repressors and those who committed human rights violations,” Vassel assured in a dialogue with Télam.
The editorial published this Sunday by La Nación described it as “healthy” the divided decision of the Federal Chamber of Cassation Criminal that, “through the votes of judges Daniel Petrone and Diego Barroetaveña, once again ratified the inadmissibility of the complaints made by human rights organizations and alleged victims of allegeds torture and ill-treatment inflicted by senior personnel of the Armed Forces on conscript soldiers who participated in the Malvinas War. According to the sentence, in addition, such facts are prescribed.
In that ruling, issued on May 31, the third judge of Chamber I, Ana Maria Figueroavoted against based on the human rights treaties incorporated into the Constitution, considered that the investigation should be kept open and warned that the Argentine State could fall under international responsibility for not investigating such complaints.
“It is an act of extreme perversion that ignores the seriousness of the events that occurred in the Malvinas and that wants to perpetrate impunity for repressors and those who committed human rights violations”Paul Vassel
In this regard, attorney Vassel noted that “it is the fifth or sixth editorial that La Nación has dedicated to the case, always promoting impunity” and stated that “there is a historical continuity” on the part of the newspaper that “got rich with the military dictatorship and today tries, in return for favorshelp the impunity of the perpetrators” of human rights violations.
In addition, Vassel highlighted: “The editorial of the newspaper La Nación calling for the impunity of the torturers of our Argentine soldiers in the Malvinas was published on the International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture. More perverse impossible.”
And he stated that this fact manages to “confirm the success of our struggle and claim: Justice for Argentine soldiers tortured by their bossesfor those who died of hunger and cold and for that man from Corrientes killed by a shot from his own boss”.
The lawyer, who was Undersecretary for Human Rights in Corrientes between 2004 and 2008, became aware of these complaints in 2005, “since ex-combatants stated that they had been tortured by their bosses on the islands,” he reviewed.
After two years of investigation, in 2007 he filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Río Grande, in Tierra del Fuego.
“To date, more than 220 soldiers testified, as witnesses, as victims, or as both. Three non-commissioned officers even testified,” he explained.
And he added: “The Public Prosecutor’s Office carried out an exhaustive investigation in three military units and came to the conclusion that torture, abandonment of a person followed by death, coercion, threats, torture for racial hatred, in the case of the Jewish soldiers, and even sexual harassment were committed“.
“This case allowed reports to be declassified in 2012 and other existing secrets about Malvinas in 2015. From those secrets it emerged that each soldier had to make a report that accounted for the torture; but in 1983, in the context of the dictatorship, they ordered the archive of all the actions that were investigated and then came the demalvinization of the ’80s and the impunity of the ’90s. There was no investigation until 2007, when I filed the complaint, “he reconstructed.
Currently, the case is in the Supreme Court“because Chamber I of the (Federal) Criminal Cassation Chamber, in a divided vote, considered that they were common crimes,” he said.
And he pointed out that, in his capacity as representative of the victims, he questions this “because it is the duty of the State to investigate allegations of torture and denounce the existence of crimes against humanity,” which could also be “considered war crimes or serious violations of human rights, because it is about torture”.
