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Minimum penalties for the leadership of the Argentine Navy for the sinking of the ARA San Juan

2021-03-22T18:34:43.188Z


A court martial dismissed the former chief of submarines and issued the rigorous 45-day arrest of the former chief of the Navy. "There was little flavor left, we expected more serious sentences," say relatives of the 44 crew members killed in 2017 in the Atlantic


The Argentine submarine ARA San Juan.Argentina Navy

On November 15, 2017, the Argentine Navy submarine ARA San Juan sank in the South Atlantic with 44 crew members on board.

Three and a half years later, the War Council has sanctioned the top of the Argentine Navy with light penalties for its responsibility in the catastrophe.

The then head of the force, Marcelo Srur, has been punished with 45 days of rigorous arrest for having informed the Ministry of Defense "incompletely" about what happened with the submarine.

Rear Admiral Luis Enrique López Mazzeo has been sentenced to 60 days of rigorous arrest.

The greatest penalty has fallen on the then head of the submarine force, Captain Claudio Villamide, who has been dismissed.

The Council of War has also ordered rigorous 30-day arrests for the captain Héctor Aníbal Alonso and the frigate captain Hugo Miguel Correa.

The other soldiers investigated have not received sanctions.

The decision was released this Monday after four months of confidential hearings, due to sensitive military information, such as the mission of the submarine that had left Ushuaia two days before issuing its last communication.

The relatives were banned from the hearings and were not cited as witnesses, although some of them were on board the ship that located the remains of the submarine on the ocean floor a year after the incident.

In their ruling, the members of the court argue that the lack of information provided by Srur to the political authorities prevented “also providing information to the crew members' relatives, with the aggravating circumstance of not appearing before public opinion demonstrating a lack of commitment and diligence, with the consequent institutional impairment of the image of the Argentine Navy ”.

The disciplinary sanctions will be executed from this Tuesday.

In the case of Villamide, the Court Martial ruled his dismissal for considering him “negligent in his actions by showing lack of care or neglect of the troops and equipment under his charge, by not having expressly ordered or recommended to the Commander of the ARA San Juan the convenience of remaining on the surface for a limited period, maintaining communication at intervals until defining a mode of action that would allow safe navigation back to port ”.

The military court also found him guilty of “failing to adopt measures within the scope of his Command to urgently summon his General Staff and other specialists in order to thoroughly analyze the situation and deepen the search for the best solution, in order to provide effective support to the unit ”.

For Luis Tagliapietra, father of the diver Alejandro Tagliapietra and plaintiff lawyer in the criminal case for the sinking of the submarine ARA, the sentence left "little flavor" because they expected both Srur and Mazzeo to be dismissed, which implies not only the expulsion of force, but to erase all their passage through it and lose the right to the pension.

"We expected more serious sanctions, especially for the head of the Navy and the head of the enlistment and training command," he says.

Even so, Tagliapietra trusts that the grounds of the ruling "will be useful for the federal justice" that is investigating the political responsibility of the then president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, and his Defense Minister, Óscar Aguad.

Claudio Rodríguez, brother of the diver and chief engineer of the ARA San Juan Hernán Rodríguez, is concerned about the progress of this cause.

“It is very stopped.

The judge wanted to close the case, "he warned in radio statements.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-03-22

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