Changes in the AFI: they limit the "spies" and can only investigate terrorism

Pablo Ibáñez

03/04/2020 - 20:27

• Clarín.com
• Politics

The "spies" of the Federal Intelligence Agency, the AFI, will not be able to perform listening or investigative tasks at the request of the judges. They may not participate in repressive operations or carry out political tasks.

As of Friday, the AFI - the name given in 2015 to the historic and fearsome SIDE - can only investigate terrorism issues and actions that put the "constitutional order" at risk. "No more internal intelligence , " they say from the Government.

That triple prohibition is contained in a DNU - Decree of Need and Urgency - that Alberto Fernández signed on Wednesday and will be published in the Official Gazette on Thursday, together with another text, a common decree that "declassifies" the information that the former SIDE on the cause AMIA.

There is a thread between the two decrees: a "shed" of information on the AMIA attack can be freely accessed and, in parallel, the AFI will focus on investigating issues such as terrorism.

In this way, the Government crystallizes an announcement that Fernández made in his speech before Congress last Sunday and moves in a direction that he set since he was a candidate: "intervene" AFI and break, according to the official account, the "spurious bond "between the spies and sectors of Justice.

"It allowed the promiscuity between the Justice and the AFI, the armed of causes and the pre-causes" , explained to Clarín government sources in reference to an alleged modus operandi: agents who would have "investigated" people without a court order to look for elements that then they raised a judge to start a file.

Through DNU 52, signed on Wednesday by the President, article 4 of Law No. 25.520 is modified and the possibility that judges can ask AFI to collaborate with a conventional judicial investigation is eliminated .

"It is not for them to do these tasks. No intelligence agency in the world starts investigating, by order of a judge, common crimes , " they explain in Casa Rosada about the decision made by the AFI intervener; Cristina Camaño, at the request of Fernández.

The declassification of the material that the AFI has "in custody" referring to the AMIA case, although it is held by the UFI AMIA, was executed because there was a request from relatives of victims who integrate Active Memory.

Camaño transmitted it to Fernández and the President gave the OK. Specifically, it refers to a "huge amount of information", which goes from intelligence tasks and testimonies carried out from the attack onwards, and linked to two major causes: that of the attack, then annulled by the Court, and the so-called "cover-up." one".

It does not involve, anyway, the "cover-up 2", that is, the one investigated by the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman.

The rest of the information - which is in a "shed" where according to the intervention was in poor building and security conditions - may be, from the decree published this Thursday, public access. It was no longer material focused on the causes: now it will include all available material, in addition to testimonies provided by agents and spies.

In parallel, the AFI advances with a process of reform and "money laundering". As explained in the Government, 80 days after the start of the intervention, the agency has already reduced the reserved expenses to only 10%.

There was also a reduction in AFI expenses. According to an official detail, it was reduced from almost 250 million pesos per month in November 2019 to less than 130 million pesos in January.

Camaño initiated an internal investigation to determine the destiny of those funds.