Three former military officers sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity

The Federal Oral Court 2 of CABA sentenced to life imprisonment three former soldiers of the Mechanized Infantry Regiment 6 of Mercedes for crimes against humanity committed against five people during the last civic-military dictatorship. Former Army officers Horacio Linari, Emilio Pedro Morello and Martín Eduardo Sánchez Zinny were convicted, and were found guilty as co-authors of the crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty and homicide. The court decided to acquit the other two defendants, Rubén Andrade and Luis Alberto Brun.La complaint of the Secretariat of Human Rights had requested life imprisonment for the five defendants, so once the grounds of the sentence, scheduled for October 6, have been published, it will analyze whether to appeal the two acquittals. He had also requested that the sentence be served in a common prison, however, the Court decided that the three convicts should continue with the benefit of house arrest. This is the first oral trial that covers the crimes committed by the duck of the Mechanized Infantry Regiment 6 of Mercedes. Based on testimonies of survivors, conscripts and even junior military personnel, the active role that this military detachment had in the systematic plan of detention, torture and extermination was reconstructed. As second lieutenants, Brun, Linari, Morello and Sánchez Zinny were section chiefs within the Infantry Companies A, B and C of the Regiment, while Andrade was a first corporal and head of the Shooting Group of Company A. The debate addressed the crimes committed against five people who were militants in the PRT-ERP and were linked to the edition, printing and distribution of the magazines El Combatiente and Estrella Roja.The events occurred during two repressive operations carried out on June 14, 1976 in a house in Haedo, in which Pedro Oscar Martucci and Rocío Ángela Martínez Borbolla were kidnapped, both of whom are still missing; and the following July 10 in a house in the town of San Andrés (San Martín district), in which Pablo Pavich and an unidentified person were kidnapped and tortured and Jorge Emilio was murdered Arancibia.La case came to trial for 32 more victims, but with the separation due to the incapacity of Alberto Schollaert, who was head of the Regiment, these facts were left out of the debate and the Court rejected the requests for complaints and prosecution to include them based on the right to the truth. Nor could former Army officers Serapio Eduardo Del Río, Luis Felipe Fernández Bustos and Gustavo Delfor González be tried for death or disability Sass.La Secretariat of Human Rights of the Nation was a plaintiff and also participated through the Coordination of Assistance to Victim Witnesses, which accompanied relatives and survivors during the debate, and the former Truth and Justice Program, now part of the National Directorate of Legal Affairs in the Field of Human Rights, in the preparation of reports on the operation of the Regiment and its role during State terrorism. 

Original source in Spanish