ARGENTINA: OUTGOING PRESIDENT EDUARDO DUHALDE GRANTS CONTROVERSIAL PARDONS BEFORE LEAVING OFFICE.
As one of his last official acts before leaving office, Argentina's outgoing President Eduardo Duhalde pardoned former guerrilla leader Enrique Gorriaran Merlo and former coup leader Mohamed Ali Seineldin. The pardon set off a controversy that included the first public disagreement between Duhalde and his successor Nestor Kirchner, who took office May 25.
The presidential pardon included seven other former military officers and 16 civilians, among them the wife of Gorriaran, Ana Maria Sivori, and Capuchin priest Antonio Puigjame. Many of those pardoned had already been released after completing two-thirds of their sentences.
Duhalde signed the pardons on May 20, after receiving a final report from the Secretaria Legal y Tecnica and various offices within the Justice and Defense Ministries. He acknowledged that the pardons were controversial, but he said he had given the matter a lot of thought.
"They made a mistake," Duhalde told the TN television network. "But this kind of violent politics no longer exists in Argentina. It's a thing of the past."
Convictions criticized by IACHR
The 61-year-old Gorriaran, a former leader of the guerrilla group Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), was one of Argentina's most wanted rebel leaders in the 1970s. He went to Nicaragua, where he collaborated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) and in 1980 led a commando group that assassinated former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Paraguay.
Somoza, overthrown by the FSLN in 1979, and his driver were killed when a bazooka shell and automatic-weapons fire hit their car on a street in Asuncion. Gorriaran said in a 1995 interview the assassination was justified because Somoza "was an active dictator who was trying to return to power."
Gorriaran later formed the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (Montoneros). In 1989, the Montoneros led an attack on La Tablada military garrison on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The Montoneros said they acted to prevent a coup against the government of Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989). During the uprising, 39 people died.
Gorriaran escaped and was a fugitive until October 1995 when he was detained in Mexico and returned to Argentina. He was sentenced to life in prison under the Defense of Democracy Act, which has been criticized by legal experts and human rights groups because it does not provide for appeals.
In 1988, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) called on the Argentine...
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