Argentine military trials of 2009

The preliminary hearings to do with the planned Argentine military trials of 2009 that in the event failed to take place had the intention to determine the validity of claims made against officers and NCOs by former conscripts for alleged cowardice, brutality and misconduct including the failure to feed the men properly under their command during the 1982 Falklands War.

The first event involved accusations related to Argentine army officers and NCOs who were accused of handing out brutal field punishment to their troops in the days and weeks prior to the Battle of Goose Green. "Our own officers were our greatest enemies", said Ernesto Alonso, the president of CECIM, a veterans' group founded by Rodolfo Carrizo and other conscripts of the 7th Regiment. "They supplied themselves with whiskey from the pubs, but they weren't prepared for war. They disappeared when things got serious".^[1]

There are others (including Robert S. Bolia writing for US Army Military Review) who maintain that the conscripts were helped to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances^[a] and tried hard to bolster morale^[2] and that their officers and NCOs fought well^[b] and tried hard to bolster morale.^[2]

In 2009, Argentine authorities in Comodoro Rivadavia ratified a decision made by authorities in Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, who, according to Argentina, have authority over the islands, by charging 70 officers and NCOs with inhumane treatment of conscript soldiers during the war.^[3] "We have testimony from 23 people about a soldier who was shot to death by a corporal, four other former combatants who starved to death, and at least 15 cases of conscripts who were staked out on the ground", Pablo Vassel, undersecretary of human rights in the province of Corrientes, told Inter Press Service News Agency.^[4]

On 19 May, a 12th Regiment conscript, Secundino Riquelme, from A Company reportedly died of heart failure (inflamed and enlarged heart because of extreme duress) after he had struggled for weeks to get accustomed to the cold weather, poor food and the bullying in his platoon that he experienced from fellow conscripts. Although his physical and mental collapse was evident, the other conscripts in his platoon failed to report it to the 12th Regimental medical officer, First Lieutenant Juan Adgigovich and the 12th Regiment chaplain, who would regularly visit their positions.^[c] There are claims, however, that false testimonies were used as evidence in accusing the Argentine officers and NCOs of abandonment, and Vassel had to resign as undersecretary of human rights of Corrientes in 2010.^[5] Private Orlando Javier Ruffino from the 25th Regiment's C Company explains that the predicament of Riquelme started soon after the conscript abandoned the frontline positions held by the 12th Regiment's A Company (taking a belt-fed machine-gun with him) and taking-up an underground hiding spot in Darwin Schoolhouse where he was soon discovered by Ruffino and other soldiers from the 25th Regiment and marched back to his position in disgrace as a deserter where he soon lost the will to live after being beaten up and even denied food.^[6]

Other veterans are skeptical about the accusations of widespread abuse with Colonel Martiniano Duarte, an ex-601 Commando Company officer in the Falklands, saying that it has become "fashionable" for ex-conscripts to now accuse their superiors of abandonment.^[7]

A former conscript, Fernando Cangiano, of the 10th Armoured Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, which fought in the Falklands War, has also dismissed the claims about the "supposed widespread sadism present among the Argentine officers and NCOs" and the claim that the conscripts had not handled themselves well during the fight.^[8] A former conscript, César Trejo, of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, which also fought in the defence of the Argentine stronghold of Port Stanley, also accused then Argentine defense minister Nilda Garré of promoting a "state of confused politics" for the CECIM.^[9]

Sub-Lieutenant Gustavo Malacalza is accused of handing out field punishment in his platoon, in the form of having staked in the open ground three conscripts at Goose Green Parks, who has abandoned their positions to go looking for food and for revealing in the process their Argentine forward positions with gunfire. ""We said it was going to be us next"," said Private Mario Oscar Nuñez, who recalled the death of the conscript Riquelme. Soon after the British landings, he and two other conscripts took the decision to kill a sheep. The three men were skinning the sheep when they were discovered by Sub-Lieutenant Malacalza, who was accompanied by fellow conscripts of A Company, 12th Regiment and given a beating. "They started kicking and stamping on us. Finally came the staking".^[10]

Then Sub-Lieutenant Ernesto Peluffo reports that another three conscripts in the 12th Regiment's A Company had also gone Absent Without Leave (AWOL) around this time seeking refuge in the house of Brooke Hardcastle. When Peluffo accompanied by a corporal apprehended them the three deserters were discovered to have been in the kitchen earlier on frying potatoes. Rather than risk a potential court-martial with possible jail-time or even execution they were given the chance to redeem themselves in the battlefield an offer they took.^[11]

Jorge Altieri, a former private in Sub Lieutenant Juan Domingo Baldini's 1st Platoon would claim that the conscripts on Mount Longdon experienced much hunger, despite permission to go through stockpiled tinned rations on the Argentine strong-hold:

During wartime, the higher ranking officers are in totally different places ... Sub Lieutenant Baldini would receive orders from Major Carrizo who was further down, to use our cold rations and that the more nutritious food we'd get when the fighting started because they didn't know if they'd be able to supply us with food. From 16 April to 11 June we fought, we'd have soup with lentils, green peas and some piece of mutton. We would tell our officer: "We can't tell the British soldiers to wait so that we could get better food and then start shooting ... We weren't properly fed prior to the fighting like we should've been, we were weakened.^[12]

The experiences in Baldini's platoon varied from soldier to soldier. Private Luis Aparicio in an interview with Silvia Paglioni for Bahia Noticias, claims that he and others once escaped into Port Stanley where they were able to buy cigarettes, jam, bread, apples and cookies and that the corporal in charge of his section would allow them to shoot and eat sheep, but that in the last 20 days they hardly got any food. He also admits that the 1st Platoon was taken out of the mountain twice, in April and in the beginning of May, so that the soldiers could get a chance to shower in Port Stanley and that on their last march into town, the men were allowed to stay there in a building. In that same interview, Private Carlos Amato says that Baldini had a net stretched outside his tent that contained tinned provisions for his men, but claims these rations were unappetizing, although he would consume them after getting a fellow conscript to heat them up first but that the NCOs in the platoon had no qualms in eating the cold rations made available to everybody in the 1st Platoon. Another former private in First Lieutenant Enrique Eneas Neirotti's 3rd Platoon, Sergio Delgado, told Silvia Paglioni that he hated his section leader, Corporal Geronimo Diaz, but admits that the NCO allowed him and four other conscripts to open up and drink several cans of beer that had been helicoptered forward. Another former private in the 1st Platoon, Alberto Carbone claimed that Baldini would always get him to go and look for firewood so that the officer could heat up his food while the remainder of the platoon "starved" and that Baldini "clashed with everyone" and as a result was left to himself and "died alone" in the coming battle.^[13]

Sub-Lieutenant Baldini is also accused of having handed out field punishment to a number of conscripts for going absent-without-leave (AWOL). "Our own officers were our greatest enemies", says Ernesto Alonso who served as a conscript in Baldini's platoon,^[14] and who later became the president of CECIM, an anti-Argentine Military war veterans group founded by Rodolfo Carrizo and former conscripts of the 7th Regiment. "They supplied themselves with whiskey from the pubs, but they weren’t prepared for war. They disappeared when things got serious."^[15] Alonso also claims the conscripts on Mount Longdon fought “without any type of leadership by our commanders, the officers and NCOs."^[16] Alonso admits he took no part in the fighting for he was evacuated during the daylight hours of 11 June, a victim of shell-shock during an artillery softening up bombardment.^[17] The previous day, Private Alberto Carbone had also been evacuated after he shot himself in his left thigh while inside his tent as is revealed in the book Two Sides of Hell (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1994). Baldini applied first-aid and allowed the conscript to be taken down the mountain, where a helicopter arrived to take the wounded soldier to Stanley Hospital, but not before coming under rifle fire from nervous Argentine sentries on Wireless Ridge that damaged the helicopter.

British Warrant Officer Nick van der Bijl (who interviewed Argentine key Argentine prisoners of war), maintains that the defenders on Longdon were helped to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances and that their officers, including Baldini, tried hard to bolster morale:

Baldini was later heavily criticized by veterans for being indifferent and selfish toward his men although this seems to have come from several petulant soldiers who failed to appreciate his efforts to keep them alive in difficult conditions.^[18]

Baldini was reported to have handed cups of hot chocolate milk to his sodden conscripts in late May 1982 in an effort to raise morale.^[19]

In 2016, Victor José Bruno, a former Private 1st Class in the 1st Platoon spoke in defence of Baldini, claiming that the officer would happily share his cigarettes with the smokers in his platoon and that Baldini, although suffering from the onset of a serious case of trench foot, refused to be evacuated.^[20]

On 23 May 1982, in view of the fact that A, B and C Companies of the 7th Infantry Regiment had been in their positions out in the open for 41 days with little food, the Regimental Adjutant (Captain Raúl Eugenio Daneri) ordered that the rifle companies take turns in preparing and serving the hot food for the 7th Regiment. "It was my turn to be the mess cook; we took turns, I think, weekly. That way I could get a little extra food. Although going out in the cold to serve the others was awful, Roberto Maldonado (my foxhole companion) and I would fill three water canteens with yerba mate tea and use them as hot water bottles—that way we had something warm to drink all morning," says Miguel Savage, a mortarman in C Company. ^[21]

In 2009, Argentine authorities in Comodoro Rivadavia ratified a decision made by authorities in Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego (which, according to Argentina, have authority over the islands), announcing their intention to charge 70 officers and NCOs with inhumane treatment of conscript soldiers during the war.^[22] "We have testimony from 23 people about a soldier who was shot to death by a corporal, four other former combatants who starved to death, and at least 15 cases of conscripts who were staked out on the ground", Pablo Vassel, president of the Human Rights Department of the province of Corrientes, told Inter Press Service News Agency.^[23]

The conscript that was supposedly "shot to death", was soon identified as Marine Private Rito Portillo, who according to the military surgeon that attended him (Major Andino Luis Francisco), was shot in error on the night of 4–5 May when returning to his tent from nearby latrines.^[24] There are serious claims that false testimonies were used as evidence in accusing the Argentine officers and NCOs and Vassel had to step down from his post in 2010.^[25]

Private Remigio Fernández of the 5th Regiment at Port Howard that according to CECIM had been starved to death had in fact sunk into deep depression, refused to eat and, despite attempts to feed him intravenously, died on 10 June. ^[26]

Since the 2009 announcement was made, no one in the military or among the retired officers and NCOs has been charged, causing Pablo Vassel in April 2014 to comment:

For over two years we've been waiting for a final say on behalf of the courts ... There are some types of crimes that no state should allow to go unpunished, no matter how much time has passed, such as the crimes of the dictatorship. Last year Germany sentenced a 98-year-old corporal for his role in the concentration camps in one of the Eastern European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. It didn't take into account his age or rank.^[27]

In 2016, retired-Colonel Horacio Sánchez Mariño (former 601 Combat Aviation Battalion pilot), in an online newspaper article criticized the anti-war veterans' group CECIM for accusing the Argentine Army of dereliction of duty, accusing the veterans association of being caranchos (vultures) that lived off the memory of the Argentine dead.^[28]