The verdict of the case that judges the crimes against humanity committed by the members of the Mercedes Regiment 6 (RIM 6), will be known next Wednesday in the courts of Comodoro Py, in an unusual hearing where the presence of the accused will be optional , a measure that generated concern on the part of the lawsuit that represents the victims.
The journalist Bárbara García, who at the age of 9 suffered the kidnapping of her mother Rocío Ángela Martínez Borbollastated that he has “low expectations” in relation to sentences that the Federal Oral Court Number 2 of the City of Buenos Aires may dictate, based on the “unfair treatment” that he had during the hearings of this process.
Bárbara and her brother, also a journalist Camilo García, witnessed the kidnapping of their mother, a PRT-ERP militant, in an operation carried out by Army troops in a house in Haedo, in July 1976.
the trial
The trial began in December of last year and illegal deprivation of liberty, torture and homicides committed between March and July 1976 against 37 people are being investigated.
The imputed are the Former Second Lieutenant Emilio Pedro Morello (former national deputy of Aldo Rico’s party); the former Second Lieutenant Luis Alberto Brun; former Second Lieutenant Martín Eduardo Sánchez Zinny, former 1st Corporal Osmar Andrade and former Second Lieutenant Horacio Linari.
The victims were militants of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), the Guevarista Youth and the Socialist Workers Party (PST)and among them is Martínez Borbolla.
The members of these organizations were the target of repressive actions by the members of RIM 6, which were aimed at dismantling the publications of the magazines “El Combatiente” and Estrella Roja, publications of the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP).
postponement of verdict
The court had planned to formulate the verdict this Friday, but it was postponed because the magistrates Jorge Luciano Gorini, Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu and Javier Feliciano Ríos had to follow this week the hearings of the trial of the case in which the supposed direction of the public work is investigated in Santa Cruz between 2003 and 2015 and whose defendant is Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
“I hoped that they would announce the sentences yesterday. But the judges were more attentive to the cause of the Public Works and postponed it. We are unlucky in that we have been dealt a very complex court, highly questioned. The people we declare as victims We often feel as if we were a file number because of the treatment they gave us when we had to testify,” García explained in statements to Télam.
In this way, the reading of the court’s decision was stipulated for 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday and previously, at 2:30 p.m., the rejoinders of the defenses and the last words of the accused will be heard.
allegations
Last Monday, at the end of the first day of the allegations made by the prosecution in the public works case, the judges heard the replies in the RIM 6 trial with an attitude that generated stupor among the victims and their families.
“We experienced a total lack of respect. While our lawyer (Pablo Llonto, in charge of the complaint) explained, the judges talked among themselves and did not listen to anything. Only the president of the court, Javier Feliciano Ríos, seemed interested. That is why I wonder what expectations can I have regarding the verdict”, asked Bárbara.
And in that sense, he added: “That was very painful because the court showed total indifference to our struggle and our pain.”
During instruction, Bárbara identified former military officer Martín Eduardo Sánchez Zinny as one of the perpetrators of her mother’s kidnapping that occurred in a house in the Haedo neighborhood, in a statement he made before federal judge Daniel Rafecas.
Based on this testimony, the magistrate resolved the prosecution and arrest of Sánchez Zinny and six other soldiers from the Mercedes regiment and, in October 2018, raised the case to oral and public trial.
A few days before being apprehended, the ex-soldier had presented “La Alumna del Inglés” at the Book Fair, a historical novel.
However, a few months after being in Campo de Mayo, the soldier accused by Bárbara obtained the benefit of house arrest, arguing that he had to take care of his son, who has autism.
Sánchez Zinny criminally denounced Bárbara for false testimony and requested her arrestbut that claim of the accused did not prosper in Justice.
“The last sign that we had of inequality in the treatment of the process was evidenced in the possibility that the court gave the defendants to optionally witness the verdict. They will listen to the reading from their homes while I have to be with an anti-panic button at my disposal. as a result of the criminal case that (the repressor Martín) Sánchez Zinny made me for false testimony,” said the journalist.
More than two years ago, Rafecas evaluated the risk that García was running and offered him to enter the regime of protected witnesses and currently follows a psychological treatment available to victims of crimes against humanity.
“That’s why I say that I am the prisoner. This is not life. I am 55 years old and I want to live and have justice for my mother. Yesterday when Pablo (Llonto) told me that the hearing would be optional in person for the accused, I directly I fainted. If Sánchez Zinny and (Emilio) Morello do not go to a common prison after this trial, I will have lost. That is my feeling, “he stressed.
“I am the prey. This is not life. I am 55 years old and I want to live and have justice for my mother”Barbara Garcia
This Friday, the lawsuit that represents Bárbara and Camilo in this process presented a letter demanding total and absolute attendance by all the members of the case, but so far, “we have not had any news,” García added.
For his part, Llonto told this agency that “after many years the time has come for sentencing and we await a conviction of those responsible for Mercedes’ RIM 6 because in the trial it has been proven that they had a group of intelligence tasks and operative”.
“We hope that with all the testimonies, as soon as possible, those responsible will be convicted, who have been unpunished for 46 years and many were members of the Carapintada group that rose up against democracy and then-ex-president Raúl Alfonsín,” he added.
Morello and Sánchez Zinny were also part of the carapintadas groups who, under the command of then Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico, rose up against the democratic order during Holy Week in 1987.
Both the prosecution and the complaints requested a life sentence, considering them co-authors criminally responsible for the crimes of aggravated homicide by treachery.
