Sanguinetti published this Friday, July 29, an opinion article in his column of the “Friday Mail”, entitled: “Military, judges and a prosecutor”, in which he refers to the recent prosecution with prison of Lieutenant General (r) Juan Rebollo for his participation in the military operation that ended with the death of Diana Maidanikc, Laura Raggio and Silvia Reyes, aged 22, 19 and 19, (Las Niñas de Abril), an event that occurred in April 1974.
Sanguinetti states that Rebollo “is held responsible for a tragic episode that occurred in 1974, in a confrontation between Tupamaros and a military group.”
“Three young girls died and none other than the head of the acting military group, Captain Juan Gutiérrez, and then Lieutenant Rebollo was also wounded. In other words, it is a typically military episode,” said the former president.
He considered that it could be considered a “homicide in legitimate defense, but, in any case, judged with the law in force at that time, so it was a common crime.”
Sanguinetti understands that the acting prosecutor “acknowledges this fundamental fact, but then contradicts himself in substance because apart from ignoring even the prescription of the crime, he acknowledges that there was a ‘strong shooting of several minutes’ but then affirms that the three dead young women were shot… ‘”.
He added that they are “all presumptions, when a prosecutor can only accuse if he has absolute certainty of the facts. In the case, he even doubts whether “there was resistance or not” to the raid, but he still accuses. It is very serious, because since there are laws, in dubio pro indictment, in doubt in favor of the accused”.
The president indicated that the episode worries him because it is not about “the reprehensible figures of the dictatorship, but about an official of democracy, like others who today suffer similar threats.”
General Rebollo was promoted by Sanguinetti in 1985, and was the first general of the democratic government. “We chose him from the shortlist proposed then by the Commander in Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General (Hugo) Medina, who relied on a group of officers who were fundamental in the difficult balances that had to be overcome in those times.”
“We are, as noted, in very dangerous terrain for the democratic life of a country that built a climate of peace after the dictatorship, on the basis of great magnanimity. The Tupamaros were amnestied or their freedom was decreed through a favorable calculation of the years in prison. There were 30 unsolved crimes, for which no one was arrested. As is well known, the Expiry Law was voted on, at the proposal of Wilson Ferreira, which, submitted to a plebiscite twice, in 1987 and 2009, was ratified,” Sanguinetti stated in his opinion column.
He recalled that later there was a “crazy interpretive law that even provoked the angry opposition of Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro and, finally, the Expiration Law was ‘repealed’, ignoring that it had already produced irreversible effects.”
“As serious or more than the legal is the double standard: for some amnesty, for others prison,” he questioned.
He noted that “beyond that clear ethical duality, it is true that some of those prosecuted in these years were really responsible for despicable acts and there was proof of it. Then prosecutions began to be decreed without further evidence and now they are reaching young officers of the time, who later made an outstanding career under democratic governments and became generals or admirals.
Sanguinetti questioned that “for this purpose, the legal texts are twisted and political assessments are even made that are totally out of place, such as saying that having commissioned the Armed Forces to fight the guerrillas, in September 1971, generated an ‘inexorable path’ towards the coup”.
For Sanguinetti, “this happened, as is known, 60 days before an election, when the irresponsible Tupamara escaped from the Punta Carretas Prison and a government that had only successfully dealt with the issue with the Police, has no other way. to appeal to the Armed Forces”.
“Nothing excuses the responsibility of the commanders who later carried out a coup, but no prosecutor is authorized to make political judgments, and even less so on a legal and justified act of a democratic government,” he said.
serious professionals
“Serious professional soldiers are being condemned for acts of 50 years ago in which their duty forced them to act in extremely difficult circumstances of tension and confrontation. They are soldiers who, I affirm in the name of personal experience, helped to reconstruct democracy”, argued the former president and current secretary general of the Colorado Party.
He questioned that the Judiciary has been incurring in “excesses of some judges in various areas.”
“Specifically, a single prosecutor and two judges are acting. It hurts us, it worries us, it makes us regret. A Uruguayan society, which was fairly generous to those responsible for the political violence of the 1960s and 1970s, must not accept that, by forcing laws and treaties, a climate of persecution is installed that can well be described as revenge, revenge or, even worse, of demagogic exploitation”, he sentenced.
