Civil Society, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population

RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Trial Delays Spark Justice Vs Executive Spat

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 28 2007 (IPS) - The government of Néstor Kirchner is mounting an offensive against judges sitting on Argentina’s highest criminal court, accusing them of delaying the course of justice in cases involving human rights abuses committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. But this action may itself prove an obstacle to the course of justice, say activists and lawyers.

Lawyers representing relatives of the military regime’s victims fear that the executive branch’s recent abrasive attack on judges of the National Criminal Cassation Chamber, who hear appeals for annulment of criminal trials, will be counterproductive. They would have preferred dismissals, if justified, to be handled through the proper institutional channels, respecting the principle of separation of powers.

Lawyer Rodolfo Yansón of the Argentine League for the Rights of Man told IPS that any action taken against judges that is not channelled through the Judicial Council, which has jurisdiction over judges’ behaviour and can if necessary request impeachment procedures, “is improper and doesn’t help matters.”

Yansón and four other lawyers are representing 61 survivors or relatives of victims of the dictatorship. Last week they approached the Judicial Council requesting the dismissal of four Cassation Chamber judges for sitting on case files, obstructing the work of oral tribunals, and contradicting themselves, in order to favour accused military personnel.

The complaint against the judges is shared by human rights lawyers representing the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Relatives of those Detained and Disappeared for Political Reasons. They told IPS that the Cassation Chamber is like a black hole, where cases lose momentum and come to a standstill.

Because of the long delays, only six of a total of 700 people charged with crimes against humanity have been convicted, according to CELS.

The criticisms are directed at Cassation Chamber president Alfredo Bisordi, and at the three judges in Courtroom Four, where half of nearly 200 requests for trial annulments await resolution, some of which date back to 2003. The Chamber has 12 magistrates and is divided into four courtrooms, with three magistrates each.

Activists and human rights lawyers are of the opinion that Courtroom Four judges are deliberately employing delaying tactics.

In fact, Courtroom Four has freed a large number of rights violators who had been prosecuted, contravening the court’s own rulings.

The lawyers supported their arguments by pointing out that the Magistrates Association had criticised Bisordi on several occasions for being an apologist for the dictatorship, and for the lack of impartiality he showed in his treatment of victims and their representatives.

In 2005, Bisordi called Graciela Daleo, a survivor of the dictatorship’s human rights crimes, a “terrorist,” and said that Yansón “defended criminals.”

The complaint over delays was presented to the Judicial Council, which will decide whether there are grounds for impeachment of the judges named. The Council is made up of 13 members, including judges, lawyers, academics, government officials and legislators.

Opposition lawmakers on the Judicial Council also noted the delays in the Criminal Cassation Chamber, but they spurned pressure from the executive branch to dismiss the judges outright.

The pressure they referred to was apparent at a rally on Saturday, Mar. 24 in the central province of Córdoba, in commemoration of the 31st anniversary of the coup d’état, when Kirchner escalated his harsh accusations against the Chamber judges whom he blamed for the delays.

“What’s going on in the Cassation Chamber, where trials that should be well under way have got bogged down?” he said in front of thousands of people at the rally, many of whom were relatives of victims or survivors of state terrorism. “I know the Judicial Council is going to take action,” he added.

The president also criticised two of the Chamber’s prosecutors who, he said, have been “delaying trials for years,” and he added “Enough of that! Please!”

The offensive was taken up by Kirchner’s associates. Interior Minister Aníbal Fernández, for example, asked the president of the Cassation Chamber to “do the country a favour and resign,” in order to avoid impeachment proceedings.

Instead of rejoicing at what was apparently government support for the cause of human rights, Yansón said that this kind of interference was damaging to due process. “The president’s statements are not helpful. If he truly has the political will to see justice done, he should put aside speech-making and take action quietly,” the lawyer said.

Useful support would be efforts to seek agreement among the members of the Judicial Council and formulate a legitimate complaint against the judges who have been dragging their feet. “There are good reasons to dismiss them, but a consensus is needed,” Yansón said.

Furthermore, publicly lashing out against the judges undermines the position of human rights defenders by provoking the judicial branch into closing ranks. This could discourage some judges and lawyers from testifying against these judges if and when a case is brought.

Bisordi defended himself against the allegations. “In 40 years (of legal work) I have never seen such explicit interference by the executive branch in the judicial branch,” he said. His career spanned the last dictatorship, during which he was secretary to a judge who turned down legal appeals on behalf of the disappeared.

Human rights organisations estimate that some 30,000 Argentines fell victim to forced disappearance during the military regime.

“They seem to want to grab all public power for themselves,” Bisordi said about the government’s ambitions. Kirchner has not called “for those accused (of human rights crimes) to be tried, but for them to be directly convicted,” he complained.

He said the delays in reaching decisions were due to “the constant stream of cases coming in” since 2005, when the Supreme Court declared that the laws of “due obedience” and “full stop” were unconstitutional. The two amnesty laws had made it impossible to bring lawsuits against human rights violators since the late 1980s.

“The case load rose from 2,000 in 2004 to 3,500 in 2005, and to 6,000 in 2006,” Bisordi said. To deal with this heavy case load, the Cassation Chamber has the same human and material resources as it did in 1992, when it was created as part of a reform of the criminal justice system.