(Periodistas/IFEX) – On Thursday 2 March 2000, federal judge Gabriel Cavallo indicted five Air Force officials on charges of “abuse of authority”. The five are implicated in using illegal intelligence manoeuvers on ten journalists. The head of Federal Criminal and Correctional Court Number Four believed that the operations in which the military personnel are implicated […]
(Periodistas/IFEX) – On Thursday 2 March 2000, federal judge Gabriel Cavallo indicted five Air Force officials on charges of “abuse of authority”. The five are implicated in using illegal intelligence manoeuvers on ten journalists.
The head of Federal Criminal and Correctional Court Number Four believed that the operations in which the military personnel are implicated “constitute, without any doubt, intelligence operations.” He stated that “it has been proven that orders existed to investigate the journalists who were working on airport security and offers to supply goods and services to airports” in Argentina. However, he indicated that the charges would not include espionage because “they were not compromising national security”. The army personnel were afraid of being charged with espionage under the National Defense Law, which expressly prohibits intelligence operations within the country.
The judicial process opened on 23 November 1998, after the daily “Página/12” reported on the discovery of an Information Request Order (Orden de Pedido de Informacion, OPI) for ten journalists who had been investigating security problems in Argentine airports since 1997. The document ordered an investigation into the activities of the daily “ClarÃn”âs Rolando Barbano, Alcadio Oña and Hernán Firpo; “La Nacion”âs Adrián Ventura and Roberto Solans; “Página/12″âs Carlos RodrÃguez and Sergio Moreno; “El Cronista”âs José E. Toyah and Dolores Olveira; and Alfredo Vega, formerly of “La Nacion”.
The military personnel who were named as being responsible are Director of Central Intelligence Office II José AgustÃn Vanden Panhuysen, Director of Department III of Central Intelligence Office II Jorge Alberto Lopez, Director of the Regional Intelligence Agency of the Federal Capital Vice-Commodore Salvador Ozán, Captain Jesús Horacio Guasti and Captain Guillermo Luis Barreira. On 24 November, the Air Force ordered all five men removed from their positions, just hours after the publication of “Página/12″âs article.
In December 1999, the attorney handling the case, Miguel Angel Osorio, searched Air Force facilities and found documents proving intelligence investigations were underway on the journalists, a womenâs group and leftist political and studentsâ groups. On some of the documents they found an “S” classification, which an Air Force official explained meant “Subversive”. The last Argentine military dictatorship tortured and assassinated thousands of people who were given this classification between 1976 and 1982.
