Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Incomplete Justice for Protesters Killed by Police

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 10 2006 (IPS) - It was mid-2002, the height of Argentina’s dire economic and social crisis, and the security forces were called out to squash a street protest by the poor and unemployed. Two of the demonstrators were killed, and caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde was forced to call early elections.

Three and a half years later, the courts sentenced the police officers who shot Maximiliano Kosteki and Darío Santillán, to life in prison.

But the victims’ families are not satisfied, and are demanding an investigation of the officials in the Duhalde administration (2002-2003) who ordered the crackdown.

The verdict announced late Monday by a court in the Lomas de Zamora district of Buenos Aires was celebrated by demonstrators from several organisations of the unemployed, who since the Jun. 26, 2002 killings have been demanding that the police officers be tried and convicted.

Kosteki and Santillán were killed in Avellaneda, a district on the south side of greater Buenos Aires, near the Pueyrredón bridge, which was cut off by the protest.

Duhalde’s cabinet chief, current lawmaker Alfredo Atanasoff, had warned that if traffic across the bridge was blocked, it would be considered “a declaration of war.”

Based on photos and video footage shot by the press, the judges found Buenos Aires provincial police Commissioner Alfredo Fanchiotti and his driver, police sergeant Alejandro Acosta, guilty of killing Kosteki and Santillán.

Kosteki was shot and killed in the street by a bullet to the chest, and was carried by fellow protesters to the Avellaneda train station where they tried to call an ambulance. Santillán, who tried to help Kosteki, was shot in the back by Fanchiotti and Acosta as he tried to escape from them.

The court also found the two men guilty on seven counts of attempted murder. A total of 30 demonstrators were shot and injured during the crackdown.

In addition, the judges convicted five other police officers for “aggravated concealment” and a sixth for “usurpation of authority”, since he took part in the repression despite the fact that he no longer belonged to the police.

But the families say Monday’s court decision was only a partial victory. “It’s a first step. Now the intellectual authors, who are higher up, must be found,” Alberto Santillán, the father of one of the victims, told IPS. He said he would act as plaintiff in a parallel case in which 11 former government officials are being investigated.

Fourteen former officials were summoned as witnesses in the trial – including Duhalde himself and several of his high-level associates – but only three showed up. The rest were excused on different grounds by the prosecutors and judges.

The court sent the testimony by former officials to the federal court that is investigating the performance of former members of the Duhalde administration. One of them, the then director of the state intelligence secretariat, Carlos Soria, stated in the trial that the repression on the Pueyrredón bridge was meant to serve as an example of what would happen if the unemployed movement continued to hold its protests.

Plunged into a profound crisis, the Duhalde administration needed to “reaffirm the authority of the state,” admitted Soria. That is why it ordered an unusually forceful action to prevent the blockade of the bridge, involving members of the federal police, the Buenos Aires police, and the Gendarmería (rural police force).

“The protests were becoming increasingly radical, and different groups with different demands were joining in,” he noted. These groups included the “piqueteros”, unemployed workers who usually demonstrate by setting up roadblocks or “piquetes”, bank account-holders whose savings had been frozen, and members of community action groups.

“This represented an institutional threat to democracy,” Soria maintained during the oral hearing against the former police officers.

Others testifying at the trial included survivors and protesters who had been detained and tortured. Edgardo Feraris was one of them. The police arrested him and took him to an empty lot, where they interrogated him while kicking him, threatening to shoot him, and holding a bag over his head to suffocate him.

“I begged with them and told them that if they were going to kill me, then to get it over with as quickly as possible,” testified Feraris, who was taken to a police station after the torture session.

“The police who were sentenced were following orders, they weren’t acting on their own account,” stressed Marcial Barreiro, who suffered a gunshot wound during the demonstration and was one of the plaintiffs in the trial.

“We cannot allow the state to resolve social crises by opening fire on people,” he remarked to IPS.

The deaths of Kosteki and Santillán, who were members of the Aníbal Verón Unemployed Workers Movement, unleashed a shockwave of anger throughout the “piqueteros” movement, especially since the government initially tried to blame the protesters for the violence that led to their demise.

The day after they were killed, when the responsibility of the police had yet to be ascertained, the minister of justice at the time, Jorge Vanossi (now a member of Congress), went to court to denounce an alleged “attack on democracy” by the demonstrators.

The Lomas de Zamora court ordered the prosecution of Vanossi and other former officials on charges of false testimony, given the contradictions in the statements they made while testifying in the oral hearing against the former police officers.

The Kosteki family attorney, Claudia Bracamonte, stressed that up until now, “there has been no investigation of the criminal responsibility of government officials.” She is confident, however, that the sentencing of the former police officers will help advance efforts to identify and punish those who gave the orders for what she called a “massacre”.

Duhalde was appointed president in January 2002 after the late 2001 economic, social and political collapse that forced then president Fernando de la Rúa to step down.

A total of 29 demonstrators were killed in street protests in December 2001, and the deaths during the roadblock at the bridge brought the number of victims to 31.

By mid-2002, Argentina faced the highest poverty rates of its entire history. Almost 58 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line, according to estimates from the National Statistics and Census Institute.

Just six days after the murders of Kosteki and Santillán, Duhalde called early elections.

Instead of remaining in office until December 2003, when de la Rúa’s term would have expired, Duhalde decided to move up the presidential elections from September to March, scheduling the transfer of power for May.