Ex-president Carlos Menem has appealed the seven year prison sentence given to him for his involvement in the illegal trafficking of weapons to Croatia and Ecuador, and maintained that the sentence was not justified.
Menem appealed through the Federal Chamber of the Cassation Court, after seven years of prison were imposed on the ex-president on June 13.
Simultaneously, the defence introduced an extraordinary motion before the ruling of Room I, which in March revoked Menem’s pardon and sentenced him for smuggling, so the Supreme Court can absolve the ex-president.
«The court has not explained how, in its judgement and going beyond the declarations directed towards all of the accused, it weighs the level of guilt and injustice in the deciding of the punishment, much less how those three concepts – injustice, guilt, threat – sit together, which is why the sentence lacks an adequate grounding,» criticised lawyers Maximiliano Rusconi and Gabriel Palmeiro, Menem’s defence.
In light of this, with the amount of extenuating circumstances to take into account, they have not managed to make it clear what were the reasons why [the sentence] has been imposed on our client, just one year less than what was requested by the plaintiffs», the defence added in a written statement.
Rusconi and Palmeiro crticised that in the first ruling the court pardoned all of the accused and, after the Court of Cassation’s decision to overturn it, the sentences were fixed.
In the same sentence, ex-Defence Minister Oscar Camilión received a sentence of five years and six months in prison; and in Menem’s case an extra request to remove senatorial privileges was added.
The case began in 1995 for the smuggling of more than 6500 tonnes of weapons to Croatia – when an international embargo was in place – and Ecuador, then in armed conflict with Peru, which were originally intended for Panama and Venezuela.
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