RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former Argentine President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) will not appear Wednesday before the judge who summoned him to give a deposition in a case investigating him for alleged illegal spying on the families of the 44 crew members of the Navy submarine ARA San Juan, which disappeared in November 2017 and was found sunk a year later.
“I won’t appear tomorrow until the motions that my lawyer will make are resolved to guarantee me due process and defense in the trial,” Macri said this Tuesday through his Twitter account.
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On October 1, Judge Martin Bava, in charge of the Federal Court of Dolores, Buenos Aires, decided to summon Macri to testify -first on October 7 and then on October 20- and prohibited him from leaving the country. However, at that time, the former president was out of Argentina.
According to Macri, the magistrate is “manifestly without jurisdiction” and “functional to pro-government interests”.
“Judge Bava violated my guarantees from the very first minute and involved me in a case that is not a case to be investigated in Dolores and in which I have nothing to do with. It is, according to what my lawyer explained to me, an arbitrary imputation where they seek to persecute me”, he affirmed.
ALLEGED ESPIONAGE
According to the writ of summons to testify, Macri is accused of having allegedly ordered and enabled, from his position as president, the “systematic” performance of illegal intelligence tasks between December 2017 and the end of 2018.
According to the judicial investigation, the alleged espionage aimed to obtain personal data and information from the relatives and relatives of the crew members of the ARA San Juan submarine.
These actions, according to the judicial resolution of summons to questioning, “sought to influence the political and institutional situation of the country, specifically with respect to the claims” made by the relatives for the sinking of the submarine, but also aimed to “know their activities, the places where they met, their data and those of their environment.”
Macri assured this Tuesday that he has “nothing to do” with this court case and that he “never” spied or asked for spying on the families of the families of the crew members of the submarine. “To persecute me, they use the pain of the families of a tragedy like the one we lived with the ARA San Juan,” he said.
The former president said that he “always” was and will be at the disposal of Justice, but he will not allow “rights to be violated and power to be abused with political intentions that stain the truth.”
“I will continue to appear before Justice as I have always done, as many times as necessary, but I will not stop raising and questioning all arbitrary decisions that violate the rights that protect all citizens,” said the former president.
“For all these reasons, my lawyer will make all the corresponding proposals to correct this situation, and in due time, if necessary, I will appear to respond, as I always did, to these false accusations,” he added.
SUBMARINE
In September 2020, the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), with Peronist Alberto Fernandez as president, denounced that the previous government conducted illegal espionage on relatives of the submarine crew members.
The accusation reaches, besides Macri, his former intelligence chief, Gustavo Arribas, and his deputy, Silvia Majdalani, both already indicted in this case.
The ARA San Juan, which belonged to the Navy and disappeared in November 2017 with 44 crew members on board, was found one year and two days after its trail was lost by the U.S. company Ocean Infinity, although its remains – dismembered in several parts – and the bodies of its crew members were never refloated.
Almost three years after discovering the submarine, the judicial investigation continues to find out what happened to it and to detect if there were irregularities in its disappearance and search.
In 2019, a parliamentary investigative commission determined “shared responsibilities” in the Navy’s chain of command, and last March, a Navy court-martial sanctioned several officers.