RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: 116-Day Hunger Strike Ends after President Issues Decree

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 30 2000 (IPS) - Argentine President Fernando de la Rúa issued a decree Friday reducing the sentences of 10 of 12 political prisoners, who subsequently lifted their 116-day hunger strike declared to demand the right to an appeal.

Relatives of the hunger strikers – who are serving life sentences for a 1989 assault on a military garrison – announced in the Plaza de Mayo outside the seat of government in the capital that the fasters had lifted the hunger strike.

The prisoners, who will not be immediately released, are in critical condition, which could even take a turn for the worse when they begin eating again, the doctors attending them warned.

After repeated failure by Congress to reach agreement on bills introduced by the government in search of a solution, and after the courts refused to pronounce themselves on the demand for the right to an appeal, De la Rúa cut by one-third the sentences being served by the members of the leftist Everyone for the Fatherland Movement.

The prisoners were convicted for attempting to occupy the La Tablada military garrison near Buenos Aires on Jan 23, 1989, where they said a coup d’état was being plotted to overthrow the government of Raúl Alfonsín. The operation left 39 dead.

The captured members of the leftist movement were tried under a special law, the so-called “Law for Defence of Democracy”, which admits no appeal. The 11 inmates were sentenced to life in prison.

Alfonsín, who was nearing the end of his term, was the first civilian president elected after the 1976-83 dictatorship, which left at least 10,000 people “disappeared.”

Through the decree, the state set the life sentence of Roberto Feliceti, considered the chief mastermind behind the assault, at 25 years, and reduced the sentence to two-thirds. In other words, Feliceti will be eligible for parole in 2006, instead of 2014.

The life sentence of Claudia Acosta was set at 22 years, which means she will be eligible for parole in 2003.

The life sentences of nine other hunger strikers were set at 20 years, according to which they will be eligible for parole in just over a year. However, within a few months several of the inmates could be released during the day to work, returning to prison only at night.

But for the time being they will not be granted a new trial, nor the right to appeal.

The sentences of former guerrilla chief Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and his wife Ana María Sívori will not be commuted. However, they had already been granted a retrial, which reduced their sentences to 18 years.

Gorriarán was the head of the Revolutionary Army of the People, one of the guerrilla organisations that operated in Argentina in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s he publicly claimed responsibility for assassinating former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, in Paraguay.

Also excluded from the decree were two members of the Everyone for the Fatherland Movement who hold dual Spanish-Argentine citizenship and are serving their sentences in Spain.

The presidential decree was immediately backed by the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which for the past three years has been urging the Argentine government to ensure equal treatment before the law of those convicted in the La Tablada affair.

According to Justice Minister Jorge De la Rúa – the president’s brother – the IACHR was pleased with the government’s efforts to respond to the demands of the prisoners, and recognised that the De la Rúa administration’s initiatives before Congress and the courts did not receive adequate treatment.

According to the IACHR, at least nine members of the leftist movement were summarily executed after they had surrendered, while three were “disappeared.” Furthermore, the regional body said there was conclusive evidence that all of the prisoners were tortured, and that the trial was plagued with irregularities.

Given that situation, the IACHR recommended an appeal, retrial or other reparations for the prisoners.

Prominent artists and human rights defenders from Argentina and around the world, including Portuguese Nobel Literature laureate José Saramago, and Argentine Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, warned that the denial of the right to appeal violated international human rights treaties to which Argentina is a signatory.

The government introduced several bills in Congress which would have modified the Law on Defence of Democracy, but none of the initiatives drummed up the necessary support among opposition and ruling coalition legislators.