A THOUSAND DEAD IN A GREAT PIRACY
Saint Augustine, in The City of God, refers to the States in which
justice is absent and compares them to a band of pirates,
because as he writes, if it is banished: “what are kingdoms but great
piracies?” (IV, d); because even a band of pirates can subjugate
peoples and call itself a kingdom. It will have achieved impunity, without losing injustice
In Argentina we have long been living in a great piracy, whether those
governing are Kirchner, Fernández, Macri or Milei and this is denounced in yesterday’s
newspaper “La Prensa”, in the article by Agustín de Beitía entitled: “A thousand
military personnel have already died prosecuted for the 1970s” and which begins
as follows: “A thousand members of the Armed Forces, security forces, and
civilian officials of the last military government, have already died deprived of their
freedom or under some of the judicial proceedings being conducted for the
revolutionary war that bloodied the country in the seventies, while there is not
a single combatant from the terrorist organizations prosecuted or deprived of their
freedom”.
The article clarifies that “the members of the insurgent groups who were
investigated, prosecuted or convicted in the 1970s by the Federal Chamber,
and those tried during Alfonsín’s government, remain protected by amnesty laws and
pardons never annulled, unlike what happened with the Armed Forces”.
From the same writing, we learn that “currently there are 519 military personnel, police
and civilians deprived of their freedom and that more than a hundred have not been convicted and
that they are kept imprisoned in pretrial detention that exceeds the limit allowed
by law, “but time passes and that is not corrected”.
And also that “when it comes to military personnel, pretrial detentions can
be extended without anyone reacting. According to the latest survey by the Union of
Promotions, there are 105 people who have been detained between 3 and 6 years; 128 who
have remained deprived of freedom for 6 to 10 years; 176 between 11 and 15 years
and another 33 who have been confined for more than 16 years”.
Many enjoy house arrest, but almost eighty are
detained in various penitentiary institutions and that despite
the fact that many are over 70 years old and have serious physical
ailments. A habeas corpus presented by the Association of Lawyers
for Justice and Concord, exposed the state of abandonment and
cruelty of the judges, who keep in prison people with cancer,
incontinence, senile dementia, colostomy bags and recently operated
on tumors… and this type of resources after going from one court to
another, end up in the Supreme Court of Justice awaiting a
resolution while the prisoners continue to die. It is difficult not to
consider that there is a deliberate intention to let them die in
prison.
Cruelty, savagery, deliberate purpose of making them suffer, while
the prisoners await the only possible release, that of death.
But the complaints about the absence of justice reached the Vatican and
representatives of Justice and Concord reached the Argentine pope,
who upon greeting them said “we are taking care of it” and got
rid of them by referring them to Monsignor Dominique Mamberti.
Francis died years later, but nothing changed in the great piracy.
If he dealt with the issue his intervention was totally ineffective.
Years ago, the Institute of Practical Philosophy, made itself present in
the matter with a declaration entitled: “Regarding the destruction of
the Armed Forces, victims of limitless hatred and unparalleled neglect”,
which has the capital of a great Argentine military man, Enrique
Mosconi: “Armed institutions are worth according to what the moral
force of the Nation is and that moral force is the result of the cohesion
of the people”.
Today, that people is an amorphous mass, disintegrated, without any moral
force. In the same declaration we denounce the mendacious trials that are
being carried out against our soldiers and the humiliating systems of
the prisons that house them (Twelve years of declarations that do not
need clarifications, Infip. Buenos Aires, 2017).
All validated by the Supreme Court until now. And as
Agustín de Beitía concludes in his article: “This is what they want to call
memory, truth and justice”.
Buenos Aires, August 24, 2026
Bernardino Montejano