The trial of Miguel Etchecolatz, which is scheduled to begin June 20th, will be the first public and oral proceeding to take place in the country since the repeal of the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) and Law of Obediencia Debida (Law of Due Obedience), and the first in the series derived from the Juicio por la Verdad (Trial for Truth).
LA PLATA – The former Director of General Investigations for the Police of Buenos Aires Province, Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, will be judged by the Oral Court in the First Federal Court of La Plata, made up of Dr. Horacio Isaurralde, Dr. Carlos Rozanski, and Dr. Norberto Lorenzo. The accused will be defended by the lawyers Adolfo Casabal Elía, who previously appeared in the oral trial for the appropriation of Carmen Sanz, and Luis Eduardo Boffi Carri Pérez.
Casabal is remembered for his remark “Montoneros blow winds” when in his defense of the genocides he attempted to frame them as a response to a supposed subversive advance in Argentina. For his part, Boffi Carri Pérez, as president of the World Jurist Association, voiced his concerns for the constitutional guarantees of the former Supreme Court Justices Eduardo Moliné O´Connor and Adolfo Vázquez during the political trials which dismissed the Máximo Tribunal (Supreme Court) of the nation.
Dr. Carlos Dulau Dumm will act as public prosecutor and complaints will be heard by La Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos La Plata (the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights La Plata), La Asociación de Ex Detenidos Desaparecidos (the Association for Ex-Detained Desaparecidos), La Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (the Association for the Grandmothers of the Plaza of Mayo), La Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (the Headquarters for Argentine Workers), Nilda Eloy, Julián Axat, María I. Chorobik de Mariani, and Genoveva Dawson de Teruggi.
The History of this Case
In the first of April of 1998, La Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos La Plata, together with a group of relatives of desaparecidos, demanded before the Federal Court of Appeals of La Plata the renewal of the investigation of the kidnappings which were conducted in the jurisdiction of the Court (La Plata, Berisso, Ensenada, the south zone of Greater Buenos Aires, and the western part of the Buenos Aires province).
This action demonstrated the declared mission of the human rights organizations to oppose the laws of impunity and finally obtain, not only Truth, but also Justice.
For twenty days and two agreements the court delayed the petition of La Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos La Plata (A.P.D.H.) On September 30th, 1998 the court initiated the oral and public audiences which finally began to shed light on the atrocities committed by the dictatorship.
Exactly one year later, on September 30th, 1999, the Judge Leopoldo Schiffrin solicited the Court to demand that Miguel Etchecolatz be investigated for the new, denounced crimes, which had not been included in the judgment carried out in the 1980s under the name “Causa Camps” (Camps Case).
In December of 1999, the Court resolved to deny the request of Judge Leopoldo Schiffrin and instead referred the case to the General Prosecution to formulate the corresponding denunciation of the first request before the judges. The case was placed before Judge Arnaldo Carozza, who declared it incompetent and referred the proceedings to the federal capital in Buenos Aires. The resolution was ratified by the judges Alberto Durán and Jorge Hemmingsen (deceased).
In this manner, the cause remained in the hands of the Buenos Aires judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, who amplified the investigation and prosecuted the oppressor.
Later, upon the annulment of the laws of the Punto Final and Obediencia Debida, the Federal Court of the in Buenos Aires resolved to reopen the “Camps” case and its involvement with the city of La Plata. As a consequence, this decision also renewed and returned the case of Miguel Etchecolatz to the hands of Dr. Corazza, who elevated it to trial.
The Cases Which Will Be Judged
The proceedings will judge the former police official for the first degree murder of Diana Esmeralda Teruggi, the illegal deprivation of freedom and application of torture and first degree murder of Nora Formiga, Elena Arce Sahores, and Margarita Delgado, as well as the illegal deprivation of freedom and torture of Julio López and Nilda Eloy.
In a span of approximately three months the courts will hear 134 witnesses, the majority of which will be family, police, and liberators of the clandestine detention centers. At the finalization of the testimonies, in mid-September, the Court will conduct inspections of the clandestine detention centers, which were once the scene of the human rights violations now being investigated, and which previously had been the place of both accusation and judgment.
For its magnitude and importance, this process will not be carried out in the public chamber of the federal Courts, but instead in a larger room, most likely the Astor Piazzolla of the Teatro Argentino.
A Historic Trial
Miguel Etchecolatz will be the first oppressor brought before a public and oral trial in Argentina since the repeal of the laws of the Punto Final and Obediencia Debida. This action signifies the importance of the first trial, which will mark the course for the struggle against the laws of amnesty.
Likewise, it is also the first in a series of penal causes derived from the series Juicios por la Verdad, which from 1998 have multiplied in the country and played a role of increasing importance in demonstrating that the deviant crimes of the military-civic dictatorship of the Argentine government between 1976 and 1983 can not go unpunished.
