Families of ARA San Juan seek to quash trial and retry in Mar del Plata
Lawyer Luis Tagliapietra filed an appeal with the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation to challenge the ruling by the Santa Cruz court. The prosecution alleges unfulfilled expert reports and irregularities during the proceedings.
Cassation appeal seeks to quash trial over sinking of ARA San Juan
Relatives of crew members of the submarine ARA San Juan submitted an appeal to the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation requesting the annulment of the trial held in Río Gallegos and the holding of a new hearing before the Federal Oral Court of Mar del Plata. According to infobae.com, the filing was made by lawyer Luis Tagliapietra, who acted both in his own right—his son Alejandro was a member of the crew—and in representation of other relatives.
The appeal challenged the ruling by the Federal Oral Court of Santa Cruz, which unanimously acquitted Luis López Mazzeo, Héctor Alonso and Hugo Correa, and convicted Claudio Villamide by majority to three years of conditional imprisonment and six years of special disqualification from holding public office, for breach of the duties of public official in concurrent ideal conduct with aggravated culpable damage resulting in death.
The accused and their roles in the chain of command
At the time of the incident, the four convicted or acquitted individuals held different positions within the structure of the Navy. Rear Admiral López Mazzeo headed the Navy's Training and Readiness Command (COAA). Captain Villamide commanded the Submarine Force (COFS) and exercised operational control of its units. Captain Alonso served as chief of staff of that command, and Captain Correa was chief of Operations Department. In command of the ARA San Juan was Captain Pedro Martín Fernández.
The conviction of Villamide divided the court: Mario Gabriel Reynaldi and Enrique Nicolás Baronetto formed the majority, whilst Luis Alberto Giménez voted to acquit him. Among the points that marked this difference was a stretch of the last navigation that could not be reconstructed: what occurred inside the submarine between the last recorded contact at 08:36 on 15 November 2017 and the implosion detected at 10:51.
Unfulfilled expert reports, central point of the challenge
Tagliapietra's appeal moved the discussion to the investigation stage. His position was that the case went to trial without having exhausted evidentiary measures ordered years earlier, and that this deficit, combined with the irregularities reported during the proceedings, compromised the complete validity of the process.
"This appeal is filed requesting the revocation of the aforementioned sentence, the annulment of the oral and public trial because the judges of the court have not attended, neither before, nor during the debate, and furthermore, in their own sentence, to the constitutional guarantees and rights that safeguard the process and the rights, both of the victims and of the accused," Tagliapietra expressed when calling for a retrial before another jurisdiction.
One of the main grievances dated back to 19 November 2020, when the Federal Court of Appeals of Comodoro Rivadavia ordered the investigation to continue and ordered a series of measures before concluding the criminal investigation. These included a technical-computer expert report on the film material and mosaic of photographs corresponding to the discovery of the submarine by the company Ocean Infinity, and the formation of a body of technicians specialising in submarine engineering or naval engineers, with professionals appointed by the court, the Ministry of Defence, the Navy, the defence teams and the prosecution.
Tagliapietra stated that these orders were not fully complied with. "Without any foundation, and without any technical, economic or other impediments, the investigation court failed to comply with this mandate from its superior," he wrote. In his view, elements that he characterised as "fundamental to the ascertainment of objective truth" were left unproduced.
Direct questioning of the investigating judge
The appeal pointed directly at federal judge Marta Isabel Yáñez, head of the Federal Court in Caleta Olivia. The prosecution stated that "the judge in charge chose not to produce the evidence", despite the fact that, according to the filing, specialists and national and foreign state institutions with the capacity to intervene had been made available.
The absence of these measures also explained, according to the appeal, why the prosecution did not submit its own request to elevate the case to trial. Tagliapietra had opposed the closure of the investigation, considering that expert reports were still pending and that the investigation had also not concluded regarding all possible responsible parties. In this context, he believed it was contradictory to maintain that the investigation was incomplete and, at the same time, formally request that the case be taken to trial.
In one of the most critical passages of the filing, Tagliapietra linked the lack of these measures to the outcome of the process and warned that this situation could have resulted—"or what did result", he wrote—in a benefit of the doubt that, in his view, did not stem from the facts alleged or the participation of the accused, but from a "spurious lack of evidence".
The motion was rejected before the trial began
Tagliapietra asserted that he raised the matter again before the start of the hearings and requested that the trial not proceed under those conditions. The court rejected the motion. The challenge also included questions regarding the restrictions that the prosecution attributed to the judges during the hearings and the territorial jurisdiction under which the case was conducted, identifying Mar del Plata as the venue that corresponded for an eventual retrial.
"This lack of evidence production generated or resulted in an oral and public trial lacking fundamental evidence to determine the materiality of the facts and the possible responsibilities of the accused," Tagliapietra concluded in his appeal, according to the document to which infobae.com had access.
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