ARGENTINA: Explosion Report Might Revive Arms-Smuggling Scandal

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 28 2003 (IPS) - In 2001, former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) had to suspend his honeymoon when he was put under house arrest in connection with an arms-smuggling scandal.

Now, just after he became a father again at the age of 73, a disturbing new report has shed light on the 1995 explosion of a military armaments factory, and could open the can of worms once again.

Attorney Ricardo Monner Sánz, who brought the charges that launched the investigation in the arms-smuggling case in 1995, told IPS that although it is lying dormant, the case could be reawakened as a result of the new report on the munitions factory explosion.

On Thursday, Menem graciously received journalists at his home in Chile, where he lives with his Chilean wife, former Miss Universe Cecilia Bolocco. They were photographed with their newborn baby son, Máximo Saúl.

Meanwhile, in a press conference held in the central Argentine province of Córdoba, a report was released that stated that the 1995 explosion was intentionally set.

”The Nov. 3, 1995 explosion in the military factory of Río Tercero (in the province of Córdoba) was intentional,” said lawyer Ana Gritti, a plaintiff in the lawsuit concerning the explosion, which left seven dead and over 300 wounded.

”The factory had to be destroyed to wipe out evidence of the illegal sales of arms to Ecuador and Croatia,” she added, referring to the alleged intent to cover up missing weapons that had been smuggled to those countries.

Eight years after the blast which suddenly turned the small provincial town into a battlefield in an undeclared war and the streets into a mine field scattered with artillery shells, a report has confirmed that the explosion was purposely set, as many in Argentina suspected from the start.

On Thursday, the daily newspaper ‘La Nación’ published an article on the official report, which four experts at the National University of Córdoba have submitted to the federal courts.

The experts concluded that the explosion in the military-run arms plant ”was intentional” and not an accident as the first instance judge had ruled after the initial investigation.

The four experts demonstrated that the explosions were detonated by a remote control operated by a cell-phone.

”The start of the first fire in a barrel of TNT (trinitrotoluene), the surprising and vigorous conflagration in the rest of the drums holding the same explosive, and the simultaneous explosions that followed were intentional and organised by someone knowledgeable in explosives and the effect of detonations,” states the report.

Investigating Judge Luis Martínez, who handled the case, had decided to hold an oral trial on evidence of ”culpable negligence,” for which he prosecuted five people – three members of the military and two civilians.

But the Federal Appeals Court in Córdoba ordered a more in-depth investigation with a new focus, in the direction pointed out by an expert witness, who was charged with giving ”false testimony” after his investigation concluded that the explosion was intentional.

Plaintiff Ana Gritti’s husband was an indirect victim of the explosion. He had a heart attack as he was attempting to evacuate the school where he worked as a teacher, and his death was attributed to the shock caused by the loud explosion and the stress of attempting to keep the children safe.

The explosion destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and left around 10,000 people homeless or jobless, out of a total of 44,000 inhabitants.

The justice system officials who investigated the illegal sales of weapons to Ecuador and Croatia tried to obtain copies of the court files and transcripts from the Río Tercero case, but their requests were turned down by the judge and prosecutors in Córdoba.

Gritti and the accusing parties in the arms-smuggling case had repeatedly noted that it was odd that Menem, who was president when the explosion occurred, told reporters just a few hours after the blast that it was ”an accident,” and that it was their responsibility to inform the public of that ”fact.”

The arms-smuggling scandal broke in 1995, when the newspaper Clarín reported that 8,000 FAL assault rifles and 75 tons of munitions which were supposedly shipped to Venezuela actually ended up in Ecuador, when that country was involved in a brief border war with Peru, and Argentina was one of the guarantors of peace between the two nations.

It was later reported that another 6,500 tons of war materiel, which were to be shipped to Panama, had instead been delivered to Croatia, in violation of a United Nations arms embargo.

In both cases, Menem and at least four of his ministers were found to have signed secret decrees authorising the supposed shipments of weapons to Venezuela and Panama.

Eight months after the investigation into the arms-smuggling scandal got underway, the Río Tercero munitions factory blew up.

In a string of mysterious deaths of people somehow implicated or involved in the Río Tercero or arms-smuggling cases, General Juan Carlos Andreoli, the new overseer at the weapons factory, who had replaced Luis Sarlenga when he was arrested in connection with the Ecuador-Croatia arms shipment case, died in a helicopter crash.

In August 1998, retired navy captain Horacio Estrada, who had been questioned about the weapons smuggled to Ecuador, was found dead in his apartment with a bullet to his left temple. He was right-handed.

Vicente Bruzza, an employee in the Río Tercero munitions factory and a whistle-blower who reported strange circumstances surrounding the explosion, died of an apparent heart attack in 1997.

Another of the factory’s employees, Francisco Callejas, who travelled to Croatia to provide technical assistance for operating the smuggled weapons, reportedly died of a stroke in June 1998.

”If the presidential decrees that permitted the illegal sales of arms to Ecuador and Croatia had not existed, the munitions factory would have played a different role, and the Nov. 3, 1995 incident would not have occurred,” said Gritti.

Legal action in the arms-smuggling case came virtually to a standstill until 2001, when a Buenos Aires federal court ordered the first instance judge to speed up the investigation with the aim of determining who was ”ultimately responsible.”

Federal Judge Jorge Urso then ordered Menem’s arrest, just two weeks after the former president’s marriage to Cecilia Bolocco.

The former president and his new wife were planning a honeymoon in France and Syria – Menem is of Syrian descent – and the judge said he moved up his order that Menem be questioned out of concern that he might flee.

After Menem was interrogated, Urso ordered his arrest.

Menem spent five months under house arrest, accused of heading an organisation created for criminal purposes involved in the illegal sale of weapons, which was supposedly carried out through the forging of documents, misappropriation of public funds and the creation of ghost companies to launder illegal commissions.

But in a controversial ruling, the Supreme Court ordered Menem’s release, on the grounds that the charge of illicit association was not proven.

Lawyer Ricardo Monner Sánz and other experts in criminal law complained that the Supreme Court ruling was aimed at ”burying” the case. A year later, Menem announced that he was running for president for the third time, in an election won by Néstor Kirchner last May.

But today, the possibility that Menem and former members of his government may see the insides of a courtroom again has emerged due to the new evidence that the Río Tercero explosion was not accidental, and the strong suspicions that the blast was aimed at concealing missing weapons that had been sent to Ecuador and Croatia.

In an interview with IPS, Monner Sánz said the report by the University of Córdoba experts was ”extraordinary news.”

He said the study introduced an ”entirely new element” in the case in terms of penal procedure, because it ”requires putting the case, which has done a 180-degree turn,” back in the hands of an investigating magistrate.

”The Penal Code does not make it clear what must be done in this unusual case, but I believe it should be returned to the stage of gathering evidence and specifying charges, and that Martínez should recuse himself, in order for a new magistrate to take this new report and investigate once again, based on the now-proven hypothesis that the explosion was intentional,” said the lawyer.

Monner Sánz said that although the arms-smuggling case has practically been extinguished in Buenos Aires, that could change if a judge prepares the groundwork for a new criminal prosecution in Córdoba and the investigation goes more in-depth, based on new testimony.

”I’m not saying Menem would be immediately involved, but I’m not saying it’s impossible either,” he added.