The judges of the highest court of Argentina rejected an extraordinary appeal presented by the defense of the Jujuy terrorist leader, Milagro Sala.
In an exemplary ruling that revives the hope of an independent justice in Argentina, Supreme Court judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, Juan Carlos Maqueda and Ricardo Lorenzetti rejected an extraordinary appeal presented by Milagro Sala’s defense, and ratified her sentence to 13 years of effective prison.
The Jujuy terrorist leader has been sentenced since 2019 by the Oral Criminal Court 3 of the northern province for the case known in the media as “Pibes Villeros”.
Although the Kirchnerist leader has been serving her sentence in her house since the pandemic’s start, her lawyer wanted her to be released completely.
Jujuy justice concluded that Sala formed and led an illegal association between 2013 and 2015 to extort several people and defraud public funds from an agreement signed between the Institute of Housing and Urbanism of the province of Jujuy (IVUJ ) and the Undersecretary of Urban Development and Housing of the Nation, during the second term of Cristina Kirchner.
“It is a criterion supported by this Court that the autonomy that the National Constitution recognizes to the provinces requires that the causes that in the substance of the litigation deal with aspects of that jurisdiction be reserved to their judges, by the respect due to their faculties to give themselves their own institutions and be governed by them”, read in the argumentation of the ruling that had the unanimity of the four supreme judges who are currently in office.
“In line with this fundamental premise, it has been repeatedly resolved that the pronouncements by which the highest provincial courts decide on the local appeals that are brought before them are not subject to review by way of extraordinary appeal.”
“This is valid unless an injury to a federally rooted right is proven or that the sentence, due to its serious defects in foundation or reasoning, does not constitute a reasoned derivation of the current law applied to the circumstances of the case”
“Within this framework, the extraordinary federal appeal attempted is inadmissible and, therefore, it has been well denied by the quo,” argued the court in the sentence.
In addition to extorting, threatening, and ordering the beating of several citizens of the Province of Jujuy, the sentence was given in line with the enormous sums of money that she defrauded from the public treasury through the appropriation of money delivered by public agencies to a group of cooperatives that responded to his will, to later divert those funds to her own pocket.
That money was destined, before it was stolen by the violent terrorist from Jujuy, for the construction of houses and housing improvements for the most neglected sectors.
Sala not only extorted Jujeños through terror to promote her political agenda but also stole social assistance money from the poor.
The money fell into the hands of members of the illegal association, who took it in bags to the home of Milagro Sala or the headquarters of Tupac Amaru, and the works never began.
The use of a single bank account corresponding to the cooperative “Pibes Villeros” was also verified to collect all the illegally collected funds. It wasn’t ignorance of how to hide a crime; it was impunity.
Milagro Sala presented the request to the Court after 2020. The Jujuy Superior Court of Justice rejected a similar request and also ratified the ruling that had been issued by the Oral Criminal Court 3.
Before, the case had been reviewed by the Jujuy Chamber of Cassation and also confirmed.
Sala’s poor defense, led by lawyers from the ultra-leftist Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), assures that she was being criminalized for her political activism, her condition as a woman, and even for her Coya ethnic group.
None of this is true, and the reality is that Sala terrorized the people of Jujuy for several years until the departure of Kirchnerism from power in the province gave her the backing that local judges needed to finally convict the dangerous criminal.
With information from La Derecha Diario