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From Rome
This July 9, in addition to being a great day for Argentina, it has become a historic day for the families of many Latin American missing who saw their hope for justice come true. It is because the Supreme Court of Italy confirmed this Friday the life sentences handed down by the Court of Appeal in 2019, for 14 Chilean and Uruguayan soldiers of the Condor plan accused of crimes against humanity.
Before the Court of Appeal (judicial proceedings preceding that of the Supreme Court and after the first instance trial started in 1999), 24 were sentenced to life imprisonment. Of these 24, four Chileans (one is deceased) did not appeal before the Supreme Court for which their sentences were declared final. Of the other 20, three were killed (one Bolivian and two Uruguayans) and the court decided to suspend the sentences of three Peruvians until it receives their certificates of life or death, because if they are deceased , no conviction is pronounced against them.
Those condemned on Friday were 14 soldiers, 3 Chileans (Daniel Aguirre, Pedro Espinoza, Carlos Luco Astroza) and 11 Uruguayans (José Arab Fernández, Juan Carlos Blanco -was a civilian, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Uruguayan dictatorship-, Juan Carlos Larcebeau, Pedro Mato Narbondo, Ricardo Medina Blanco, Ramas Ernesto, José Sande Lima, Jorge Quesada, Ernesto Soca, Jorge Néstor Troccoli and Giberto Bissio). Nine of the Uruguayans were operating in the Automotores Orletti clandestine detention center in Buenos Aires.
The condemned are credited with the disappearance and death of 43 Latin American citizens: four Chileans kidnapped in Chile, thirteen Uruguayans kidnapped in Argentina and six Argentines kidnapped in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. To these are added 20 other Uruguayans kidnapped in Argentina but whose disappearance is attributed to only one of the defendants, Jorge Néstor Troccoli, who was a member of the intelligence service of the Uruguayan military navy (FUSNA). Tróccoli lives in Italy in complete freedom and was the only defendant to have attended the trial hearings.
For Troccoli, the arrest warrant should start almost immediately, as well as for the other convicts living in Latin America at large, while waiting for the latter to be requested for extradition in order to serve their sentence on the peninsula.
The triumph after 22 years of effort
“I feel great joy and great emotion because justice has been served, because we have concluded a trial that has lasted more than 20 years. A great joy for all the families of the victims who obtained justice today. But I am also thinking of the relatives of all those missing who have not received it and who continue to ask for it in the Uruguayan courts and have not yet obtained it.. This confirmation of convictions opens a new field to seek other means of justice in Italy, if justice is not obtained in Uruguay ”, he declared. Page 12 the Uruguayan journalist Zelmar Michelini, son of the political leader of the same name who was kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires in 1976.
Michelini, who lives in Paris, came to Rome to hear the Supreme Court ruling, as he did to hear the decisions of the two other Italian courts on the Condor trial. Michelini told the prosecutor that he had carried out the first investigations in 2001 and then in 2015 before the court of appeal. Everything for the case Daniel Banfi, a Uruguayan whose wife, Aurore Meloni who now lives in Milan, went to ask Father Michelini for help when her husband was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1974.
According to Michelini, the decision of the Italian Supreme Court can influence the processes underway or to be carried out in Latin America. “Every country must realize that it is missing the train of history,” he said. “If I were a Uruguayan judge, I would be ashamed that criminals against humanity were punished abroad and not in my own country. Ideally, each country should try its own criminals. “
Comments from other relatives, such as the Uruguayan Cristina Mihura, widow of Bernardo Arnone kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1976, were even more moving. “For me, it was a very positive judicial end which cost many collective efforts,” he told Page 12 – However, over the hours, I feel that this will not be enough to fill the absence of so many people who still miss us and whom we cannot stop looking ”.
Avocado Arturo Salerno, one of those who led this legal battle against the Condor, for his part commented that the convictions “conclude a long procedural path which has rendered truth and justice to crimes against humanity”. The most complicated moment in those years, he added, “was the transition from year one to year two of the process. I was convinced that the first degree sentence would be positive. Convinced that the existence of the Condor, recognized by the European Court, would be recognized by Italian justice. But we are all a little confused by first degree acquittals. But fortunately, the first degree was not defeat but only a moment that had to be overcome. Indeed, the judges of the Court of Appeal appreciated our work and carried it to the sentence “which condemned all the defendants to life imprisonment.
Jorge Ithurburu, president of the non-governmental organization 24marzo.it who during all these years helped relatives and lawyers in this process, said that the road traveled since the group filed the first complaint in 1999 has been long. “Of the 146 arrest warrants in 2007, we sentenced only 14. But we are very satisfied. Our hearts go out to the deceased loved ones, as well as to the lawyer Marcello Gentili, who worked so hard. We are very satisfied that there has been justice ”.
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