The lawyer representing the majority complaint of the relatives of ARA San Juan, Valeria Carreras, considered that an eventual ratification by the Federal Court of Cassation of the dismissal issued against former President Mauricio Macri in the case of alleged illegal espionage would expose a “website of legal favors” towards the former president.
The lawyer also stated that there are “multiple causes” for which the judge should be challenged Carlos Mahiquesmember of that court that must resolve, after the judicial fair, the procedural situation of Macri in this case.
In dialogue with Télam, Carreras pointed out that both the ruling for the spying on relatives of the divers and the resolution of the recusal of Mahiques will be dealt with in February, and assessed that the former president “is in a great hurry” for the sentence to be finalized in his favor dictated by the judges Mariano Llorens, Leopoldo Bruglia and Pablo Bertuzzi of the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber.
After the summer recess, Chamber II of Cassation, made up of chambermaids Ángela Ledesma and Guillermo Yacobucci, must determine if its third member, Carlos Mahiques, will continue to intervene in the process.
Then the court must set a hearing to hear the parties rule on the dismissal, and finally determine if it leaves the resolution of the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber firm.
On July 15, 2022, the former president and the former heads of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani they were dismissed in a ruling that interpreted that “the collection of information had its raison d’etre and was justified by risks that are inherent to presidential protection and/or internal security.”
Carreras affirmed that this decision “did not deny the espionage, did not deny the photos, did not deny the reports, did not deny anything” and described this sentence as “something very serious” because he equated the mothers and widows of the sailors from the sunken submarine with “terrorists”.
In addition, the lawyer confessed that she does not have “any kind of hope in this jurisdiction of the city of Buenos Aires, which is based in the federal courts of Comodoro Py.”
“Let’s see what they do to justify the dismissal. That is where they are going to be exposed with that framework that they have. Not only travel, but wholesale legal favors,” said the lawyer.
In this way, he referred to the trip that a group of magistrates -among which was Mahiques- and Buenos Aires officials, media entrepreneurs and a former AFI agent made last October to Lago Escondido, where the British magnate Joe Lewis owns land that They are in conflict with the Argentine Justice.
Since federal judge Martín Bava opened the investigation in 2021Carreras challenged Mahiques four times, and the first three were “rejected with a simple no.”
But in the last request – made after the public knowledge that the supposed chats between the Buenos Aires Minister of Security and Justice took, Marcelo D’Alessandro, and the group of judges who traveled to Lago Escondido–, the chambermaids Ledesma and Yacobucci “made room for (Mahiques) to have to answer.”
In the presentation, to which Télam had access, the lawyer asked the judge “for decorum” and after the “scandalous trip to Lago Escondido” to separate the judge from the case.
In the answer he offered, the chambermaid pointed directly to Carreras and pointed out: “The representative of one of the complaints -without even basing his claim on any norm-, with an admonishing tone and from a pedestal of moral superiority that nobody recognizes, he allows himself to give advice and takes pleasure in apostrophizing me under the inspiration of that ‘vomit of mediocrity’ (Nietzsche dixit) that exudes a certain yellow ‘journalism'”.
Faced with this response, Carreras expanded the request and denounced that the magistrate “has been merciless with this complaint specifically” and pointed out the “violent terms” with which he expressed himself in his answer.
“Ledesma and Yacobucci argued on December 30 that they could not decide on this challenge and They requested that there be a third judge” to assess the situation of Mahiques.
Consequently, a lottery was used that determined that Judge Diego Barrotaveña be the third member of the court that will decide in February whether Mahiques continues in the case or not.
Carreras explained that, in addition to appearing in the chats about Lago Escondido that are attributed to D’Alessandro, Mahiques was an official of the Buenos Aires government headed by María Eugenia Vidal. The lawyer recalled that the current chambermaid obtained that appointment by decision of former President Macri.
Last December, the mother of one of the crew members of the ARA San Juan had filed a complaint against Mahiques, sponsored by Carreras, for alleged “ideological falsehood”, given that the date on which he appears traveling to Lago Escondido coincides with the signature of a sentence.
“So he was in Lago Escondido or signing sentences? That is ideological falsehood because he was not” in Buenos Aireswarned Carreras. She explained that the mother of crew member Jorge Luis Mealla decided to file the complaint because she considered that the judge “should be punished further if he is challenged or not.”
Carreras regretted that this complaint fell on Judge Ariel Lijowho according to the lawyer, is also named in the chats of the trip to Lago Escondido, although he did not participate in that journey to the lands that Lewis occupies.
“We don’t want Macri’s prosecution to come to nothing,” said the mother of a crew member
Yolanda Mendiolamother of the main post mortem corporal and crew member of the ARA San Juan Leandro Fabián Cisneros, pointed out that it was “very painful” to receive the ruling of the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber in which the relatives of the divers were considered “a danger to security national”, and asked that Cassation “not leave nothing” this case for illegal espionage.
“Everything that was said about mothers and wives, that we were a national danger for former president” Mauricio Macri and “for the Nation seems very painful,” Mendiola said in dialogue with Télam.
In this way, he referred to the argument put forward by the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber on July 15, 2022 to order the dismissal of Macri in the case of illegal espionage on the relatives of the deceased divers.
Meanwhile, she recalled that when they were invited to the Mar del Plata Naval Base (BNMP) during the beginning of the investigation to find out the whereabouts of ARA San Juan, they began to notice that their cell phones “made strange sounds.”
Mendiola said that the relatives realized that they were being spied on when they they noticed that the naval and government authorities knew in advance the questions they were going to ask every time they received them. That happened on February 6, 2018, at which time they were received by Macri at the Casa Rosada and they delivered a petition with various requests.
“We handed over the folder with the petition to Macri, he received it, did not open it, and began to respond to the points that were already in the folder. In other words, he already knew in advance what we were going to ask him for,” he recalled. Mendiola.
In September 2020, Three discs were found at the AFI facilities that documented surveillance and espionage activities. to the relatives of the sailors by agents of that body, who were denounced before the Justice and thus gave rise to this case.
The lawyer Valeria Carreras, part of the complaint of the relatives of the ARA San Juan, told Mendiola: “You are on all three albums, Yolanda'”, According to the woman, she stated that she appears “in photos” that were taken of her along with her grandchildren and her daughter.
In this way, he explained that in these materials “crying mothers” appear in marches and tributes that they organized and replied: “How can a housewife be a danger to the former president?” Mendiola finally pointed out that the mothers and widows of submariners have never “lowered their arms” and He demanded “truth and justice” for his son and “his 43 brothers from ARA San Juan.”
