Impunity laws


The term "impunity laws" refers to two laws and a series of presidential decrees enacted between 1986 and 1990, which prevented the prosecution or execution of convictions against perpetrators of crimes against humanity during the state terrorism carried out by the Military Junta in the 1976 civil-military coup d'état, which governed from 1976 to 1983. On May 3, 2017, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allows the sentences of persons found guilty of crimes against humanity to be significantly reduced, by application of the so-called "two for one".

Background

The 1976 coup d'état –called "Aries Operation" by its perpetrators– was the civil-military rebellion that deposed the Argentine Nation President, María Estela Martínez de Perón, on March 24, 1976. In its place, a Military Government Junta was established, led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier General Orlando Ramón Agosti. The new government took the official name of Proceso de Reorganización Nacional and remained in power until December 1983. During this period, numerous human rights violations were committed and were officially recorded for the first time in 1984, after the return to democracy, in the report Never Again by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons.
File:Menem_con_banda_presidencial-2.jpg|thumb|In 1989 and 1990, President Carlos Menem pardoned the perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Before returning to democratic power, Reynaldo Bignone sanctioned Law 22,924, "National Pacification Law", in which the members of the military juntas were exonerated of guilt and charges for the crimes carried out in that process.
In 1983, President Raúl Alfonsín ordered the prosecution of three of the four military juntas that led the military dictatorship, in a process known as the Trial of the Juntas, which ended in 1985 with the conviction of several military leaders, in a case with few precedents in world history, mainly against other military, police and civilians involved in the proven crimes against humanity. However, in 1986, President Alfonsín, under pressure from the armed forces, promoted the enactment of the so-called "Full Stop" and "Due Obedience" laws, which prevented the prosecution of most of the criminals. Beginning in 1989, President Carlos Menem issued a series of amnesty decrees freeing criminals not covered by the aforementioned laws, including convicted junta members and Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz. Together, these laws have become known as the impunity laws.

Impunity Laws

Self-Amnesty Law 22,924 "National pacification law"

Law 22,924, the National Pacification Law, enacted on September 22, 1983, became known as the Self-Amnesty Law because through it, the leaders of the military dictatorship that called itself the National Reorganization Process, faced with the possibility of being prosecuted by the government that would result from lifting the political ban and calling elections, sought to issue an amnesty for themselves.
Article No. 1 of the law stated as follows:
Article No. 5 of the law stated as follows:
Article No. 12 of the law stated as follows:
The presidential candidate of the Justicialist Party in the October 1983 elections, Ítalo Argentino Lúder, declared the validity of the law, while the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, Raúl Alfonsín, denounced during his campaign the existence of a union-military pact and pledged to repeal it. Shortly after taking office as president, Raúl Alfonsín sent to Congress a bill to repeal the law, which was approved with Law No. 23,040 a week later. This repeal was the first law passed by the Argentine Congress after the restitution of democracy in 1983.
After the repeal of the National Pacification Law, Raúl Alfonsín's Ministry of Defense officially communicated to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces the decree for the prosecution of the members of the first three military juntas. The repeal of this law made it possible to carry out the Trial of the Juntas, which judgment Jorge Rafael Videla and Emilio Eduardo Massera to life imprisonment, Roberto Eduardo Viola to 17 years in prison, Armando Lambruschini to 8 years in prison and Orlando Ramón Agosti to 4 years in prison.

Law 23,492 "Full Stop Law"

Law 23,492 of Full Stop is an Argentines law that established the expiration of the criminal action against those accused as criminally responsible for having committed the complex crime of forced disappearance of persons that took place during the military dictatorship of the self-styled National Reorganization Process of 1976–1983 that had not been called to testify "before sixty days from the date of enactment of this law". It was presented by Congressmen Juan Carlos Pugliese, Carlos A. Bravo and Antonio J. Macris, and enacted on December 24, 1986, by President Raúl Alfonsín Congress declared it null and void in 2003. During the 1983 election campaign, the Radical Civic Union candidate Raúl Alfonsín had promised that there would be no impunity for the crimes of state terrorism.
On December 5, 1986, then President Raúl Alfonsín announced a bill that abruptly stopped the filing of complaints of human rights violations during the dictatorship. It set a term of thirty days, after which the right to claim justice expired. The bill was baptized as the Full Stop Law.
The law established that "criminal action shall be extinguished against any person who had committed delict related to the establishment of violent forms of political action up to October 10, 1983". Since it sanctioned the impunity of the military criminally responsible for having committed the crime of forced disappearance of several thousand opponents, leftist activists, intellectuals, peronists, trade unionists, writers and other groups during the dictatorship. It was at the time the subject of a lively and heated controversy. Between 50,000 and 60,000 people demonstrated in downtown Buenos Aires in protest against the law, among them communists and peronists. According to El País, the Spanish newspaper, it was the largest demonstration in the federal capital since democracy had been restored three years earlier.
Convened by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, human rights organizations and extra-parliamentary leftist parties, the march was supported by revolutionary Peronists and the General Confederation of Labor. Only cases of kidnapping of newborns, children of political prisoners destined to disappear, who were generally adopted by the military, who concealed their true biological identity, were outside the scope of the law. The Full Stop Law was enacted on December 24, 1986, by then President Raúl Alfonsín, and established the suspension of judicial proceedings against those accused of being criminally responsible for having committed the crime of forced disappearance of persons during the dictatorship. Months later it was complemented by the Due Obedience Law also enacted by Alfonsín on June 4, 1987, and established a presumption iuris et de iure that crimes committed by members of the Armed Forces were not punishable.
Its first practical application occurred two days later when the Attorney General's Office, headed by the radical Juan Octavio Gauna, accepted that the law was applicable to a group of officers who acted under the orders of General Ramón Camps in the province of Buenos Aires, annulling his conviction.
The laws of Full Stop and Due Obedience, together with the pardons granted by Carlos Menem, are known as impunity laws.

Due Obedience Law

The Due Obedience Law No. 23,521 was a legal provision enacted in Argentina on June 4, 1987, during the government of Raúl Alfonsín, which established a presumption that crimes committed by members of the Armed Forces below the rank of colonel, during the State terrorism and the military dictatorship were not Punishment, since they acted under the so-called "due obedience".
Although some interpreted that legal norm had been approved by the Alfonsín government after the "carapintadas" uprisings, to try to contain the dissatisfaction of the officers of the Argentine Army, which had been previously announced during the riots of March 1987 by Alfonsín himself in a public speech in the town of Las Perdices, Córdoba and already during the 1983 campaign in which Alfonsín insisted on the need to recognize that the Armed Forces were based on the rule of "due obedience" and that there were "three levels of responsibility"; on the other hand, the trials for state terrorism continued throughout Alfonsín's government.
In this way, those accused in criminal cases of the so-called State terrorism who had not been convicted up to that time, were dismissed from prosecution. The laws of Full Stop and Due obedience, together with the people pardoned by Carlos Menem, are known among their detractors as the impunity laws.
Some of the beneficiaries of the legal norm were former frigate captain Alfredo Ignacio Astiz, frigate captain Adolfo Donda, and general Antonio Domingo Bussi.

Pardons

A series of ten decrees were sanctioned on October 7, 1989, and December 30, 1990, by the then President of Argentina Carlos Menem, pardon civilians and military personnel who committed crimes during the dictatorship self-styled National Reorganization Process, including the members of the juntas convicted in the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, the prosecuted Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz and the leaders of the guerrilla organizations. More than 1,200 people were pardoned through these decrees.

The 1989 pardons

On October 7, 1989, President Menem issued four decrees pardoning 220 military personnel and 70 civilians.
  • Decree 1002/89: It pardons all the military chiefs prosecuted who had not been benefited by the laws of Full Stop and Due Obedience, except for Major General Guillermo Suárez Mason, who had been extradited from the United States.
  • Decree 1003/89: Pardons leaders and members of guerrilla groups and other persons accused of subversion, among them persons who were dead or "disappeared". It also pardons Uruguayan military personnel.
  • Decree 1004/89: Pardons all participants in the military rebellions of the carapintadas of Semana Santa and Monte Caseros in 1987 and of Villa Martelli in 1988.
  • Decree 1005/89: Pardons former members of the Junta de Comandantes Leopoldo Galtieri, Jorge Isaac Anaya and Basilio Lami Dozo, convicted for crimes committed in the conduct of the Falklands War.