04/27/2020 - 19:50
- Clarín.com
- Politics
In the midst of a climate of tension in the country's prisons with riots and confrontations within the establishments, President Alberto Fernández yesterday endorsed that the common prisoners who are part of the groups at risk of contagion with coronavirus get out of prison and access the benefit of the domiciliary. "Prisons are a very risky place of human concentration. Contagion and contamination can occur very easily," said the President, who favored "restricted liberties" with electronic devices to control detainees outside of prisons. .
It was the first time that the President directly referred to the time bomb that prisons became after the pandemic spread. In recent weeks there were riots in the Devoto prison, and in the Florencio Varela, Santa Fe and Corrientes prisons. "I try that we can control it in a rational way, but it is not a problem only for Argentina," Fernández said in a radio interview and asked the opposition "seriousness" to deal with the issue. At the center of the criticism was the former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich. "Every two times three I read a tweet where he says we want to pardon. Here in Argentina some do not do an analysis and say 'they want to free to seek impunity'. It is not that," said Fernández.
Yesterday, the opposition came out to question the President's support for the homes of common prisoners.
But there were also gestures of differentiation within the Front of All. The head of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massa, warned that judges who release prisoners without complying with the victim's law, could be subject to impeachment, marking a distance with the position of the President.
To support his position in favor of alleviating the conditions of detention, the President recalled that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had already recommended that the countries that make up the San José de Costa Rica pact address the health situation in the prisons against the advance of the pandemic. "He recommends from house arrest to restricted liberties , such as bracelets to have control," said Fernández. It is almost the same argument that the Secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla, had upheld when he asked the Justice last week to give Ricardo Jaime a home address, detained for the Once tragedy, for his alleged health problems.
Fernández also recalled that the Criminal Cassation Chamber recommended that non-violent prisoners be granted house arrest with electronic monitoring . "It is a complicated issue because it is also mixed with criteria of Justice. There are people who are detained, have not yet been sentenced and are exposing themselves dangerously," he said, recalling that the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, pardoned and released 1,300 prisoners. The mention of Piñera is not less since the Chilean is in the ideological antipodes of the one Fernández commands.
The situation in the prisons and with the prisoners who are trying to get out of the prisons due to the coronavirus brought many headaches to the Government. Last week, there was a riot in Devoto's prison and a series of confrontations in Florencio Varela's Unit N23. Both riots started due to the claim of the prisoners who are looking to get out of the jails.
In the Government there is a sector, represented by the toughest Kirchnerism, which ideologically supports the exits and the reduction of sentences for common prisoners such as home prisons. There the secretary of Justice, Juan Martín Mena , and the secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla, among others, are listed. Both respond to Vice President Cristina Kirchner and came to office with the support of the former President.
Mena has under his orbit the Federal Penitentiary Service and is the one who was in the negotiations last Friday in the Devoto prison where he agreed a document with the prisoners in which a dialogue table was defined to advance with the domiciliary ones for the risk groups and even for those who are close to serving their sentences. In other words, prisoners who did not finish purging their guilt but who could come out the same due to the pandemic effect.
Pietragalla was the official who last week asked the Justice to grant Ricardo Jaime the home address, imprisoned by the tragedy of eleven, and to release the son of Lázaro Báez, Martín, who has a preventive and is in full trial on the Ruta del Dinero K. Both moves were rejected by the Criminal Cassation Chamber.
