The former head of state was accused of having spied on the relatives of the 44 sailors who died aboard the ship. Families have announced that they will call on.
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Listening to the families of the victims of the sinking of the San-Juan submarine were not illegal and aimed to ensure the security of the president. This is what the national call chamber estimated, Friday, July 15, by revoking the indictment of the former Argentinian president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019, right), accused of illegal spy. The ship had disappeared in November 2017 off the Argentine coast. Found by more than 900 meters deep in November 2018, its remains could never be bailed out, despite the wish of the families of the 44 deceased sailors.
“We consider that there is enough evidence to affirm that the activities deployed had the sole objective of presidential security and/or internal security, and for this reason were justified,” said the three magistrates of the court, In reference to the information collected for months by the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) on the relatives of the victims, who had largely mobilized to demand the continuation of the research of the submarine and had carried out an intense campaign to know the truth .
On the 1 December 2021, the former president had been indicted by a Dolore judge (province of Buenos Aires), who had estimated that listening and monitoring by AFI Families were intended to seek to “know their activities, the places where they met, their personal data and those around them”, with the aim of “influencing the political and institutional situation of the country”. “Illegal intelligence tasks, which were not based on legal authorization”, had argued the judge, before the case was referred to federal justice.
listening, hacks and spinning
Families have ensured that they have been the subject of monitoring, telephone and intimidation. At the end of 2017 and “at least all year 2018”, they knew themselves “listened to”, explained in December in the world Luis Tagliapietra, father of a missing sailor. “We spotted infiltrated people in families who pretended to be close to victims, but also hacks of our email addresses, spinning and we were taken in pictures,” he reported.
The Dolore judge had left Mauricio Macri in freedom against the payment of a deposit of 100 million pesos (775,000 euros) and had prohibited him from leaving the country. The ex-president has always firmly denied the spying of families and denounced political persecution. “The truth has won. The truth can still gain in Argentina. Do not lose faith,” tweeted Mr. Macri, 63 years old, current executive president of the FIFA Foundation on Friday, and who obtained judicial authorization in early July to return to Switzerland and France.
already indicted for other illegal listenings
Luis Tagliapietra considers that the revocation of the indictment is “grotesque”. The families of the victims announced that they would appeal the decision: “It is a judicial blow which makes us relive the same feeling as each time [that we were given] a false daily relationship, at each meeting with National authorities and each false promise, “said a press release signed by their lawyers.
“It is not justice that has acquitted [the ex-president]. It was his friends who saved him,” tweeted the Minister of Justice, Martin Soria, in reference to two of the judges From the call chamber, Pablo Bertuzzi and Leopoldo Bruglia, appointed to this position without going through a competition, as required by the procedure, during the mandate of Mauricio Macri.
It was not the first time that the ex-president was implicated in this kind of case. In 2010, when he was mayor of Buenos Aires, he had already been indicted for illegal telephone listening. An indictment which had followed the filing of a complaint by his own brother-in-law, Daniel Leonardo, in open conflict with the Macri family, and by Sergio Burstein, leader of the association of families of the victims of the attack against the mutual Jewish of Buenos Aires (Amia), who left 85 dead and 300 injured in 1994. Mauricio Macri had finally been put out of the cause in December 2015, even before a trial could be held, a few days after taking office as President of the Republic.