Alberto Julio Baños He entered the Judiciary in the midst of the dictatorship. In the ordinary criminal jurisdiction he earned a reputation for being tough. “Tough among the tough”remarks a judge who frequented him and who remembers that Baños did not hide his sympathies for the security forces throughout his career. Last September, Baños presented his resignation as a magistrate. He did it while he was in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Arshak Karhanyan and while she systematically refused to turn the investigation over to the City Police despite the fact that she had been involved in countless irregularities. Baños’s removal from public activity did not last long. This Monday, He contacted the outgoing authorities of the National Human Rights Secretariat (SDH) to inform them that he would take charge of the agency. which during the Frente de Todos (FdT) was in the hands of Horacio Pietragalla Corti. Although there has not yet been official confirmation from La Libertad Avanza (LLA), Page 12 was able to know that a meeting was already scheduled for this Tuesday at the SDH offices in the exESMA.
There is still no official confirmation that the SDH will retain its rank. A sign that alerted militants and organizations is that the ministry will no longer be of “Justice and Human Rights”, but only of “Justice”. The portfolio is led by the criminal Mariano Cúneo Libaronawho in recent weeks showed off his good friendships with judges and prosecutors.
Cúneo Libarona and Baños know each other from their younger years in the ordinary justice system. Currently, Cúneo recruited him as a teacher of the specialization in Criminal Procedure Law that he directs at the University of the Argentine Social Museum (UMSA). A priori, All the signs that Cúneo gave is that the Ministry of Justice did not negotiate with the technical-political cadres of the PRO nor did it give way to Vice President Victoria Villarruel, of recognized militancy in organizations that justified the actions of the Armed Forces or security forces during the last dictatorship. In recent weeks, a rumor had spread that Claudio Avruj He could return to the SDH, but those around the former Macrista official told this newspaper that it was never in the plans.
Although human rights organizations hope to know what Baños’ first steps will be, his name did not generate peace of mind. “This designation confirms that there will be no human rights policybecause he has no experience in the matter and is considered a harsh judge or linked to the police,” he maintains. Paula Litvachky, executive director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS). “This perspective was reflected in some of the cases that he was in charge of in which the rights of the victims were not recognized, he was very restrictive in the intervention of complaints or he refused to remove the City Police in the case. by Arshak Karhanyan,” he added.
Judicial toughness
Baños entered the civil justice system of the Federal Capital in 1977 – in the midst of the dictatorship – but spent his entire career in the criminal justice system. He had grown up in the northern area of the suburbs. A rugby player at the San Isidro Club (SIC), he later reinvented himself as a defender in soccer tournaments among judicial employees. Former opponents remember him for his fierceness when it came to preventing overflows from the sides.
He graduated in 1987 from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and, In 1993 – in the midst of Menemism – he took over as criminal judge. In those years, one of his best friends was judge Juan José Galeano, who was in charge of the investigation into the attack against the AMIA and who ended up convicted for diverting the investigation. According to the newspaper The nationwas godfather to one of his children.
Baños had a series of cases with a strong impact. Among them, the Cro-Magnon massacre, which claimed the lives of 194 boys and girls. In his court the case regarding the robbery from the hands of Juan Domingo Perón. In 2008, Baños reported that unknown persons had entered his house in Lomas de Zamora and taken three bodies from that file. He interpreted it as a mafia message because he was about to reiterate a request for the Intelligence Secretariat to inform if it kept information on the subject in its files. The following year, Baños starred in another police episode: with the custody of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA), he engaged in a shootout with criminals who wanted to rob him when he was about to enter his home in the southern area of the suburbs.
In the late ’90s, he had the cause of the prisoners who left the Penitentiary Service to steal. In 2000, he denounced that a plan had been orchestrated from prison to kill him. At that time, the person in charge of penitentiary affairs in the government of Fernando de la Rúa was Patricia Bullrichcurrent Minister of Security of Javier Milei and who will have federal penitentiary establishments under her orbit.
In 2012, Baños prosecuted the expert Roberto Locles for having intentionally damaged the bullet that killed the militant. Mariano Ferreyra. In recent years, Baños stood out for sustain the participation of the City Police in the investigation into Karhanyan’s disappearance despite the fact that it is the force that made up the victim, people accused as suspects and because it frustrated countless evidentiary measures. “My main experience with Judge Baños was from the Arshak case, and he left a lot to be desired in terms of his commitment to the investigation of Arshak’s forced disappearance and mainly his treatment with his mother. It worries me because the SDH had an important role in the search for this police officer – who is close to celebrating five years missing,” he says. Victoria Montenegro, the president of the Human Rights Commission of the Buenos Aires Legislature. In fact, the SDH had requested the removal of Baños for his defense of the City Police.
Although because he was part of the ordinary jurisdiction, Baños had no action in cases against humanity, he had an impact on a file that had as its protagonist one of the most emblematic figures of the last dictatorship. In 2010, he granted a Habeas Corpus that had been presented by the family of former Minister of Economy José Martínez de Hoz to get him out of the Ezeiza prison. –where he was housed by order of federal judge Norberto Oyarbide. Baños sent him to the Los Arcos clinic. In a proposal that the Martínez de Hoz family made before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, they valued the intervention of Judge Baños.
The arrival of Baños to the SDH marks a 180-degree turn with respect to the imprint that Pietragalla Corti gave him during his administration. Pietragalla Corti is the son of victims of State terrorism and he restored his identity thanks to the struggle of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. In a recent interview with Page 12 He highlighted that the mark of his time at the SDH was having a policy against institutional violence and having focused on the speed of the processes against genocide perpetrators.
under siege
From the military sectors they have been demanding that Milei close the SDH, precisely because of its role in trials for crimes against humanity. The Union of Military Personnel Civil Association (UPMAC) demanded the end of the policy of memory, truth and justice as well as the dismissal of three professionals involved in the processes against the genocidaires.
In the last few hours it emerged that Cúneo Libarona himself left the defense of retired police officer Enrique Barré, who was the second chief of the Banfield Well, because it was incompatible with his position as Minister of Justice.
“They are people with a profile consistent with the incoming government,” says the lawyer Guadalupe Godoy in allusion to Cúneo Libarona and Baños. ““It is clear that there will be areas of the SDH that they will try to weaken in its operation, specifically those that have to do with memory policies and policies against institutional violence.”
