Room II of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation issued a majority ruling that partially gave rise to requests from the defense of police officers convicted of crimes against humanity and acquitted a former officer sentenced for homicide; considered Montoneros as an organization with “a structure analogous to the military” and blamed a militant for her own death by ingesting cyanide, judicial sources reported Tuesday.
“It is relevant to assume that the victim belonged to an organization like Montoneros, which had a similar structure to the military and, therefore, it responded to the commitments and obligations of that hierarchical or vertical structure,” said the resolution endorsed by the judges Carlos A. Mahiques Y William J. Yacobucciwith the dissidence of the magistrate Alexander W. Slokar.
In the ruling – acquitted a former police officer what had been sentenced to life in this case – it was explained that in the attempted kidnapping of the Montoneros militant Adela Fonrougand “the consumption of a dose of poison prepared in advance by the subject himself to avoid being arrested, in the particular context in which this occurs, cannot be charged against the defendants.”
In addition, it was indicated that there is no “consistency between the action ‘of the instrument’ and the result sought by ‘the indirect perpetrators,'” since, it was alleged, that the kidnappers, upon learning that “the politically persecuted chose to ingest poison “, they were “provided with the corresponding antidote”.
It was also indicated that the victim, by belonging to Montoneros, “responded to commitments and obligations of that hierarchical or vertical structure”, and that it is then, “within that organizational discipline, that mechanism arranged for the preservation of clandestine action is arranged“.
“In the present case, the victim herself was the one who contributed to the harmful course towards death, responding to the demands and guidelines previously established by the organization to which she belonged,” Mahiques and Yacobucci sentenced.
They added that “the will of the victim was vitiated or, on the contrary, Fonrouge decided to comply with the guidelines of the organization to which he belonged, subordinating his decision to those guidelines, consciously and voluntarily accepted.”
In this way, the Cassation judges dismissed the previous sentence of the Federal Oral Court 2 of La Plata, that he had interpreted the same act as homicide by the police officers involved.
Meanwhile, Judge Slokar -at the same time president of the Cassation Chamber- pointed out in his dissenting opinion that the police officers were responsible for homicide and indicated that “it cannot be stated with any rationality that his death is a behavior of self-harm attributable to the victim himself”.
The Cassation ruling then ordered “unanimously to reject the appeals filed by the official defenses of MMartin Eduardo Zúñiga, Rafael Oscar Romero, Horacio Alfredo Ortiz and Jorge Alberto Blanco and confirm their sentences, with the exception -by majority- of the legal classification corresponding to the act that harmed Adela Esther Fonrouge”.
“By majority, partially accept the appeals filed by those named (…), and condemn Martín Eduardo Zúñiga, Rafael Oscar Romero, Horacio Alfredo Ortiz and Jorge Alberto Blanco as criminally responsible co-authors of the crime of unlawful deprivation of liberty, committed with abuse of their functions or without the formalities prescribed by law, with the corresponding aggravation for having been committed with violence, for the acts that had Adela Esther Fonrouge as a victim”.
But he decided to maintain the life sentences imposed on those accused of other acts.
Finally, also by majority, it decided to “admit the appeal filed by the private defense of José Carlos Sánchez” and “order his acquittal”.
In the process, all the acts carried out by agents of the La Plata Delegation of the Argentine Federal Police and personnel of the Federal Security Superintendence were tried and condemned.
Agents of that force illegally entered Fonrouge’s home at 7:00 p.m., while the victim was with her 6-month-old baby and without her partner, who had been kidnapped that same morning.
The same room has had rulings in favor of the genocidal Jorge “Tigre” Acosta and Miguel Etchecolatz and the ex-military Luis Firpo and Mario Ocampo, among others.
