Impunity laws

On May 3, 2017, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allows the sentences of persons found guilty of crimes against humanity to be significantly reduced, by application of the so-called "two for one".

The 1976 coup d'état –called "Aries Operation" by its perpetrators[1]– was the civil-military rebellion that deposed the Argentine Nation President, María Estela Martínez de Perón, on March 24, 1976.

During this period, numerous human rights violations were committed and were officially recorded for the first time in 1984, after the return to democracy, in the report Never Again by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP).

However, in 1986, President Alfonsín, under pressure from the armed forces, promoted the enactment of the so-called "Full Stop" and "Due Obedience" laws, which prevented the prosecution of most of the criminals.

Beginning in 1989, President Carlos Menem issued a series of amnesty decrees freeing criminals not covered by the aforementioned laws, including convicted junta members and Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz.

The benefits granted by this law are also extended to all criminal acts carried out on the occasion of or in connection with the development of actions aimed at preventing, deterring or putting an end to the aforementioned terrorist or subversive activities, whatever their nature or the legal interest harmed.

[5] After the repeal of the National Pacification Law, Raúl Alfonsín's Ministry of Defense officially communicated to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces the decree for the prosecution of the members of the first three military juntas.

[8] On December 5, 1986, then President Raúl Alfonsín announced a bill that abruptly stopped the filing of complaints of human rights violations during the dictatorship.

Since it sanctioned the impunity of the military criminally responsible for having committed the crime of forced disappearance of several thousand opponents, leftist activists, intellectuals, peronists, trade unionists, writers and other groups during the dictatorship.

Only cases of kidnapping of newborns, children of political prisoners destined to disappear, who were generally adopted by the military, who concealed their true biological identity, were outside the scope of the law.

The Full Stop Law was enacted on December 24, 1986, by then President Raúl Alfonsín, and established the suspension of judicial proceedings against those accused of being criminally responsible for having committed the crime of forced disappearance of persons during the dictatorship.

Months later it was complemented by the Due Obedience Law (23,521) also enacted by Alfonsín on June 4, 1987, and established a presumption iuris et de iure (i.e., which did not admit any legal proof to the contrary) that crimes committed by members of the Armed Forces were not punishable.

23,521 was a legal provision enacted in Argentina on June 4, 1987, during the government of Raúl Alfonsín, which established a presumption (that is, it did not admit proof to the contrary, although it did allow an appeal to the Supreme Court regarding the scope of the law) that crimes committed by members of the Armed Forces below the rank of colonel (as long as they had not appropriated minors and/or property of disappeared persons), during the State terrorism and the military dictatorship were not Punishment, since they acted under the so-called "due obedience" (a military concept according to which subordinates are limited to obeying orders issued by their superiors).

[15] A series of ten decrees were sanctioned on October 7, 1989, and December 30, 1990, by the then President of Argentina Carlos Menem, pardon civilians and military personnel who committed crimes during the dictatorship self-styled National Reorganization Process, including the members of the juntas convicted in the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, the prosecuted Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz and the leaders of the guerrilla organizations.

The majority of the radicals voted against, Luis Falcó, Raúl Baglini and the head of the block Carlos Maestro were among those who made long speeches against repealing the laws.