Daniel Santoro
08/25/2021 4:41 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 08/25/2021 4:50 PM
The lawyer for Vice President Cristina Kirchner, Carlos Beraldi,
again asked this Wednesday for the annulment
of the oral trial for the Pact with Iran,
trying to reject
the arguments of the prosecutor Marcelo Colombo, who had thought that the process
should continue
.
All within the framework of a preliminary hearing that does not exist in the Criminal Procedure Code and that enabled the TOF 8.
At the end of this new day, the TOF 8 judges María Gabriela López Iñiguez, José Michilini and Daniel Obligado decided to convene
another hearing next Wednesday
in order to hear the positions of the prosecution and the private complaints of DAIA and relatives of victims, but
under a new legal framework.
These last two parties have
not been presented
, until now, in the successive days of the public hearing to debate the nullity proposal in order
not to validate
the hearing convened under article 341 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Nation.
Farini Duggan, representative of the relatives of the victims of the AMIA attack, Luis Czyzewski and Mario Averbuch, told
Clarín
that they will study what to do in the face of this new call, which "seems like
a legal trap to validate what they did wrong
."
The preliminary hearing established by article 341 of the Criminal Procedure Code "is to
substantiate evidence
in the framework of an incident due to lack of action" not to request annulments and is the one that has been carried out so far, he added.
But TOF 8 "summoned us under
article 340
of that code, which is to deal with claims due to the inexistence of crime due to lack of action and
puts everything in the same bag, mixing pears with bananas
."
Farini Duggan explained that, in his opinion, the court should first reject the annulments and then face the incidents of inaction.
In his reply Berardi affirmed that "just as the Brazilian Court
acquitted Lula
for the violation of the guarantees of the natural judge and interference of the political power, I believe that in this case the same resolution corresponds, the nullity of all the proceedings and declare the dismissal for all accused persons. "
In this way, Cristina
follows more steps of Lula's political-judicial strategy
.
This created the Lula Institute, and Cristina, the Homeland.
Then she took out the book "Lula, the Truth Will Win" and she came out with "Sincerely."
In addition, the lawyers of the former president of Brazil launched the theory of lawfare and the former president took it as her main discursive piece before the Justice.
Thus Beraldi
wanted to compare
the public visits of the members of Cassation with the Telegram messages from former judge Sergio Moro to prosecutors in the Lava Jato case who helped the former president in any of his cases.
"This is an extraordinary historical opportunity for the judges to begin to end
practices that
have caused
so much lack of credibility
in the Judiciary," said the former president's lawyer.
Beraldi opened the hearing of replies to the arguments that the Colombo prosecutor gave last week, when he requested to
reject
the annulment of the case requested by the defenses, based on the visits of judges Mariano Borinsky and Gustavo Hornos to former president Mauricio Macri in 2016 to the residence of Olivos and Government House.
On December 29, 2016, the two members of the Federal Chamber of Cassation reopened the investigation of the complaint for aggravated cover-up made by the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
Nisman's case had been closed for "no crime" by federal judge Daniel Rafecas
without executing a single test.
The reopening was also voted by the Judge of Cassation, Ana Figueroa, who usually votes in line with the judicial strategy K.
The defenses of the defendants in the case, such as the former president;
the current Treasury Attorney, Carlos Zannini;
the Buenos Aires Minister of Social Development, Andrés Larroque;
and Senator Oscar Parrilli, among others, spoke before the judges to
try to refute, also, the position of prosecutor Colombo.
Beraldi was the first to speak and warned that "the most correct way to close a file
as shameful
as that of the Memorandum" is to accept the nullity proposal.
The lawyer argued that the conduct of Hornos and Borinsky when they met with former President Mauricio Macri meant
"an undermining of their independence"
and showed the "interference" of political power in their decisions.
In this regard, he stressed that what is being debated is "the guarantee of the natural judge" and "judicial independence" as a "fundamental guarantee of the existence of a fair trial."
On the other hand, the prosecutor Colombo maintained last week that
no loss of impartiality was shown
in the judges because it was not known why they visited the then President, who also "was not a party" in the Memorandum case.
"The prosecutor is confusing independence with impartiality. Here it is a question of an argument about the independence of the judge and the President of the Nation, as the holder of one of the powers of the State is precisely one of the people who, for preserve independence,
he cannot have contact with the judges,
"added the lawyer.
In addition, "the judges have
an imperative norm
so that this type of conduct does not affect the credibility of their judiciary," he said.
"I showed how
criminal proceedings against the person I represent (the former president)
have multiplied,
" he added.
Regarding the visits of Hornos and Borinsky to Macri, the lawyer spoke of a "concealment" despite the fact that they were
registered in the entry book of the Olivos farm and in the Casa Rosada and some were published in the newspapers.
"The prosecution deduces that Macri
had not read the ruling
" when he congratulated the judges for himself a day after the Nisman case was reopened, Beraldi recalled.
"To think that Macri is going to read a ruling
is
really
an excess of optimism
on the part of the prosecutor, but to think that Macri can make a legal interpretation of the ruling is even more extravagant," he ironized.
In turn, the defender of Larroque and former judge of a Federal Oral Court of San Martín, Lucila Larrandart, warned that "what is at stake are
the violations of guarantees, in the
case of the judges who ordered the opening of the case and who had challenged defenses ".
For her part, the Director of Legal Affairs of the Senate, Graciana Peñafort, Larroque's co-defender and who was also a lawyer in the case of the late former Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, maintained that the prosecutor Colombo made a
"fiction, which is unfeasible."