Army Chief César Milani will file a legal suit today in an attempt to remove Tucumán federal prosecutor Carlos Brito after he requested last week to question the military leader about his involvement in covering up the homicide of conscript Alberto Agapito Ledo in 1976.
Requests to questioning are normally followed by an indictment to court.
The Army chief’s legal defence team argues Brito should be removed from the prosecution on the grounds that he has lost objectivity, but Brito is planning to reject the move in an audience today that will be held before Federal Judge Daniel Bejas.
The case
The prosecutor accuses the Army chief of covering up Ledo’s murder by falsifying a public official document. At that time Milani was a second lieutenant at the Engineers Battalion No. 141 in La Rioja and Ledo was allegedly his assistant.
Ledo disappeared on June 17,1976 and a month later Milani signed a document that claimed he was a deserter. The conscript has remained missing since then.
It was common practice during the last military dictatorship to cover up forced disappearances of soldiers that were murdered by claiming they had deserted, a report published by former CELS human rights organization founders Emilio Mignone and Augusto Conte Macdonnell (father of one of those soldiers) said.
According to the study, published in 1982, at least 43 disappeared conscripts were made to disappear in this way with fake claims of desertion.
In a CELS questionnaire filed by Milani before his Army chief promotion was approved, he alleged that he had not investigated Ledo’s desertion before signing the document, even though as his superior he was suppose to. Milani also claimed that he was only informed about Ledo’s desertion by a sergeant working for him then.
The original desertion document that the then lieutenant signed is missing, with only a certified copy remaining which is being used by Milani’s defence in this new legal request. The Army chief’s attorney claims that since the prosecutor is using only a certified copy (whose validity they question) and not the original document as part of the case, this means that he is no longer objective which is why he must be removed.
Although this evidence was incorporated from the beginning of the investigation, Milani’s legal defence team is only now using this to try to remove Brito from the case.
Investigators in the probe are also surprised by how the attorney’s removal request meeting had been asked for tomorrow, according to sources quoted by news agency Noticias Argentinas.
The prosecution is suspicious about the “coincidental” timing of defence’s request as Brito’s removal request was submitted only hours before the prosecutor submitted his request for questioning.
According to the prosecution, there was little very time for the word to get out that they would be submitting the request, as Brito and his partner had decided only on December 20 that they would submit the legal action the following Monday — two days beforehand. This is why there are some suspicions that the information was leaked or they were spied on.
‘No change in gov’t position’
After having claimed that if Milani was finally indicted on crimes against humanity charges the president would remove him, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s newly appointed Chief-of-Staff Aníbal Fernández dismissed the charges against the Army chief, claiming “there is not enough evidence for a indictment.”
The former Victory Front (FpV) senator, who was was one of the main lawmakers in the committee that pushed through Milani’s promotion vote to the senate floor, claimed that he thoroughly studied the accusations against the Army chief “down to the periods and commas,” but had not found anything that needed to be proved.
“I defended him in the committee and on the Senate floor, and I would do it again,” Fernández said.
When asked about recommendations that were made against Milani’s promotion by human rights organizations such as CELS, he said that though the observations were well intentioned, “we sometimes think alike and sometimes we don’t.”
Despite the accusations, he stressed there were no changes in the government’s position and insisted that if the Army chief were indicted the president would remove him.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald