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Before OAS Permanent Council, Judge Torres of Argentina Presents on His Country’s Experience Investigating and Trying Crimes against Humanity

The Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) today received a presentation by Argentine Federal Judge Sergio Torres on his country’s experience investigating and trying crimes against humanity in his role as head of the process at the Superior School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA), which affects 913 victims from 22 countries.

Judge Torres related how Argentine courts in 2003 started investigating crimes committed during the dictatorship (1976-83) and how, contrary to other country’s experiences, processes are being handled according to the general principles of ordinary justice: there were no special judges or courts, no special laws, no selection of specific crimes and no selection of particular defendants.

“These characteristics confer my country’s democracy with and ethical superiority against the facts and persons under investigation. These processes enjoy all the constitutional and criminal guarantees that the victims lacked,” he said.

Judge Torres explained however that the cases’ particularities forced the courts to “change certain forms of logic and adapt their work methods.” Among them he mentioned protecting victims and witnesses before Argentina had a law regulating it. “No judicial system is ready to suddenly face what Argentina had to face, and this forced us to change our mentality.”

The head of the 12th Federal Court in Criminal and Correctional Matters in Buenos Aires also acknowledged the role played by the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which in 1979 visited Argentina. Documents resulting from that visit are being used now by Argentine judges in cases against the dictatorship’s crimes.

Judge Torres concluded his presentation with a plea: “Investigating these crimes is not without problems, but they must be investigated and tried, and we know that history says that there are few precedents and they are low in quality. I wish all peoples are as persistent in defending human rights as States in violating them. The lesson to be learned from Argentina’s experience is that human rights should be kept apart from partisan politics and instead turned into national policy, above the party or person in power,” he concluded.

In the same regular session, the Permanen Council heard the report on the OAS-African Union Forum on “Challenges and Opportunities in the Promotion and Defense of Democracy and Human Rights in Africa and the Americas”, held October 12-13 in Addis Ababa.

The OAS, following an initiative from its Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, reached out to establish a working relationship with the African Union that led to the first meeting of both regional institutions in Washington, DC, in July 2007. That gathering agreed to the creation of the first bi-continental “Democratic Bridge,” an initiative that established the necessary cooperation mechanisms to strengthen the political system in both continents through the promotion of democratic values and the defense of their institutions. In Addis Ababa Secretary General Insulza emphasized that “the continuation of cooperation between the OAS and the AU in the protection and promotion of human and peoples’ rights will further strengthen each regional system’s capacity to respond more efficiently to the needs of its users.”

The report on the meeting in Addis Ababa was presented by the OAS Director of International Affairs, Irene Klinger, who said that “the forum was a success in several respects. It was a demonstration of a common desire to take institutional cooperation between the AU and the OAS to a higher level. It has put our two organizations at the forefront of initiatives at the global level to enhance the power of regional cooperation.”

Representatives from the following countries also took the floor during the meeting of the Permaent Council: Argentina, Uruguay, United States, Guatemala, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Panama, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador and Dominica.

A gallery of photos of the event is available here.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-935/11