The Ministry of National Security will face an investigation to determine if they suffered “Illegal constraints”, by the officials of that time, the gendarmes who participated in the operation after which the disappearance and death of Santiago Maldonado occurred. “In the days immediately after the operation (on August 1, 2017), ex-Ministry officials went to the squads, locked up the gendarmes, kept them sleepless, exercised the worst practices of illegal pressures to indoctrinate them about what they should say before the Justice regarding what happened in the operation. “
This is how he anticipated Page 12 Esteban Rosa Alves, Undersecretary of Control and Institutional Transparency of the Ministry of Security given by Sabina Frederic. The data arises from the investigation carried out by the current authorities of the Gendarmerie, from which the accusation presented before the Justice against Pablo Noceti
, former Chief of Staff of Patricia Bullrich.
In an interview with this newspaper, Rosa Alves maintained that some gendarmes declared to their current bosses that “they were indoctrinated by officials of the previous administration”. “They speak particularly of Daniel Barberis, who was coordinator of the monitoring of cases of institutional violence, who was in the squadrons to tell them to take into account that ‘we are all in the same boat’, ”when it came to testifying about what had happened during the operation. “They told the gendarmes that they had to agree to what they were going to declare before the Justice because the Kirchnerists and human rights organizations want to shoot us the first disappeared” at that stage of democracy.
Rosa Alves said that “without interfering in the criminal justice investigation, we want to provide this investigation and offer all the technical support of our expert bodies of the federal forces, outside the Gendarmerie, to” contribute to the knowledge of the truth. ”
– The complaint against Noceti is the result of an administrative summary that reviews the actions of the Gendarmerie. How do you work, towards the future, to retrace the path traveled by a security force under the doctrine imposed by former Minister Bullrich?
– What was done was possible after making a diagnosis of the deplorable conditions in which the previous administration left not only the Gendarmerie, but all the security forces. That diagnosis has already been made, on different aspects. Hugo a logistical abandonment that the minister manifested when showing the status of the helicopters and the mobile phones of the Gendarmerie that were out of service due to lack of maintenance. There were electricity bills, water bills, unpaid, budget under-execution, debts with suppliers. This is one aspect of the deterioration in which the security forces were left. Then there are the aspects that make the breakdown of the conduct of force, the contamination with regressive and repressive doctrinal criteria. Each of these damages requires a different approach.
Q: Since the return of democracy, it is difficult to bring the security forces into line. Good intentions are not enough.
Yes, in complete agreement, something similar happens to what happens with the intelligence services, perhaps because there was never enough political testosterone, not necessarily due to a lack of political vocation. There are certain power structures and the contexts for moving forward were not always given, but we now believe that it is inexcusable, we have to use the institutional, political, and administrative resources that the ministry has, to follow a line of investigation of the truth and to avoid impunity. In that sense, the fact of having required the Gendarmerie, in January of this year, a true administrative investigation into what happened in the clearing operation on route 40, on August 1, 2017, was to walk that road. Just as you have to praise things that are done well, you do not have to be complicit or corporately hide crimes or serious offenses, such deviations. It is necessary to give a clear signal that these absences will not be tolerated because they are small groups that are the minority of the federal security forces.
–How far do you think this cause in which Noceti is pointed out has to go, when it is known, of course, that behind him was Patricia Bullrich?
– The first thing was to ask the Gendarmerie to raise the disciplinary investigation that they had done at the time, a performance in 2017 that was carried out for what was believed to be the forced disappearance of Santiago Maldonado. The action was opened to investigate the possible involvement of the gendarmes in that enforced disappearance. Instead of analyzing the operation, the decisions that were made at that time, the action was taken to cover up and absolve prematurely and thus block the possibility of making subsequent investigations into the facts.. Then the body of Santiago appeared, it was determined that there was no appropriation of his person prior to death and that investigation was closed saying that all Gendarmerie personnel who had participated in the operation were declared free of all reproach. Faced with that, Frederic ordered a serious investigation into the errors of the operation.. Prosecutor Felix Crous made a very thorough investigation and concluded that the operation was all that should not be done: excesses, errors, gross negligence. The Gendarmerie took from January to now to carry out a rigorous investigation and concluded that the operation was reckless, unreasonable and unnecessary, not urgent, because within a few hours a specialized group was going to arrive to deal with this type of conflict.. Everything had been prepared to teach this “terrorist movement” a lesson, as they described the ancestral Mapuche resistance, who insisted on treating it as “criminals in flagrante delicto”, so that they could be persecuted even if the route was evicted.
Q: How did Noceti’s responsibility arise from the report that the Gendarmerie filed?
–Of the investigative work itself and the conclusions of the summary instructor and the deputy chief of force, Commander Javier Lapalma, all this while recognizing the serious faults of the force commanders who were in the operation. But the conclusion is that without an order from the political authorities of that time, this operation could not have been carried out. Noceti’s participation had already been indicated in the case, but it is the Gendarmerie itself that has now accumulated evidence that confirms that he had been the day before and on the day of the operation. Everything would indicate that there was a political mandate to act as it acted. The report says that in the face of this situation picture, only the disaster that happened could happen.
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