The man, hugging the musician, sings the song that animates the party: “Happiness, ha, ha, ha, ha / your love gave it to me ho, ho, ho, ho.” The man's wife also hugs the musician on stage. The three of them have fun. They celebrate the golden wedding, 50 years of marriage, of Jorge Olivera and Marta Ravasi. He, although it may not seem like it, is sentenced to life imprisonment for having committed crimes against humanity during the last Argentine dictatorship, between 1976 and 1983. The guests applaud them.
Images of the party were known this week in Argentina. The national media echoed the news when the videos and photographs began to circulate on social networks. Scenes in which the repressor, 73 years old, is seen surrounded by his family and friends, dancing, drinking, singing: “Happiness, ha, ha, ha, ha / your love gave it to me ho, ho, ho, ho / today makes my heart sing ah, ah, ah, ah / oh, oh, oh, oh.”
The prosecution is now investigating the circumstances in which the celebration for the wedding anniversary of Olivera and his wife took place. Prosecutors are trying to determine where the celebration took place and if there were any irregularities. In the event that it is verified that the celebration did not take place at the home where the repressor is serving his sentence, in the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires, the public ministry requires that “the immediate revocation of house arrest be ordered.”
But even if the party was held at the repressor's house, prosecutors believe that the celebration “denaturalizes the scope and meaning of the sentence” he received in 2013 and “generates social commotion.” “Particularly when facing a person multiplely sentenced to life imprisonment for very serious crimes classified as crimes against humanity,” considered prosecutors Dante Vega and Francisco Maldonado.
Jorge Olivera was arrested in 2000 in Italy for the kidnapping and torture of Marie Anne Erize, an Argentine model of French parents who was on the cover of magazines until she turned to work in popular neighborhoods. She belonged to the Peronist Youth and her partner belonged to the Montoneros guerrilla. After he was kidnapped she escaped to the province of San Juan, in western Argentina. In October 1976, Erize was kidnapped and sent to a clandestine detention and torture center. To this day she remains missing. Witnesses to what happened have claimed that Olivera boasted about raping her.
That was one of the best-known arrests in which the former military man, who received the nickname “the butcher of San Juan,” was involved. Retired Army major and lawyer, Olivera was sentenced in 2013 for that and more than 200 cases to life imprisonment after being tried for crimes of unlawful deprivation of abusive liberty aggravated by use of violence, imposition of torture resulting in death, torture by politically persecuted and homicide doubly aggravated by treachery and by premeditated collaboration of two or more people.
The same year he was convicted, he escaped from prison: he had requested a transfer to the Central Military Hospital in Buenos Aires for medical checks and fled. He was on the run for four years until police found him hiding in the trunk of a car. He returned to prison and finally the court granted him house arrest, a decision repudiated by human rights organizations.
When he celebrated his golden wedding with his wife last weekend, the man celebrated in the open-air patio with a show by Ramón Palito Ortega. His children also dedicated a song to him and one of the five gave a speech. Javier, a priest, said he was proud that his father had defended the country in the seventies, as reconstructed by the newspaper Página / 12, which claims that there were at least 60 guests at the party. On social networks, the son reiterated his congratulations: “50 years, five sons and a life dedicated to Christ, the Country and the family.”
“The genocides are celebrating”
The party has caused outrage in organizations that demand Memory, Truth and Justice for the missing from the last Argentine dictatorship, the bloodiest in the history of the South American country. “With the Government of [Javier] Milei and [Victoria] Villarruel, the genocidaires are celebrating,” says a message shared online by the HIJOS association, which brings together relatives of missing people.
Human rights organizations have criticized the new Government's closeness to the repressors and have rejected the denialist position that both the president, Javier Milei, and the vice president, Victoria Villarruel, maintain regarding the state terrorism of the dictatorship. Villarruel, daughter, granddaughter and niece of soldiers, has also vindicated the victims of the attacks carried out by the guerrillas in the seventies from the Center for Legal Studies of Terrorism and its Victims and has questioned the processes against the repressors.
In December, the wives, sisters and mothers of those convicted of crimes against humanity pressured the Government to fulfill its campaign promise. “Why do the authorities not fulfill the promises made to the relatives of the victims of today's judicial terrorism (…)?” says a public letter signed, among others, by Cecilia Pando, who supported the party of Milei, La Libertad Avanza, and was present at Olivera's celebration.
What the relatives of repressors call “judicial terrorism” were actually processes that began in democracy to judge the military Juntas that commanded the dictatorship and that, as determined by justice, carried out a systematic plan of detention, torture and extermination. With advances and setbacks, the trials against the military were part of a pioneering state policy. More than 1,200 people have been convicted of crimes against humanity since then.
Subscribe here to newsletter from EL PAÍS América and receive all the key information on current events in the region.
#Scandal #Argentina #due #party #organized #repressor #convicted #crimes #humanity
