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Luis Abelardo Patti (born 26 November 1952) is an Argentine politician and a former senior police officer, convicted of involvement in torture and murder during the 1970s. He is leader of the conservative Federalist Union Party.
Patti was born in rural Baigorrita, Buenos Aires Province, and as a child worked in a bakery. He entered the Buenos Aires Provincial Police Academy at 16 years old and was first stationed to the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires around Pilar and Belén de Escobar. Accusations against him date back to his early years in the force, a period of political instability and tough police action against guerillas, dissidents and other activities. He was accused in a local newspaper in 1973 of killing three youths wrongly believed to have committed a crime. Patti was tried for the torture of a prisoner in 1976, but the trial was suspended and not resumed before the time limit. In 1983 he faced two further trials, including for the kidnapping and murder of Osvaldo Cambiasso and Eduardo Pereyra Rossi. [1] Again both trials were suspended. He rose through the ranks to become a police inspector and commisar and was decorated. In 1990 he faced accusations of torturing two alleged thieves with an electric prod. [2]
In 1991 Patti was appointed by President Carlos Menem to lead the high-profile investigation into the murder of a young woman, María Soledad Morales, in Catamarca Province. He concluded it was a crime of passion, amid further allegations of the use of torture with suspects, but some years later the son of a politician with influential friends was convicted of the murder after a separate investigation.
In 1993, Patti left the police and joined the Justicialist Party. He wrote a column in the La Prensa newspaper and was appointed Intervenor of the Central Market by the government. Despite the accusations against him and graffiti around the area, Patti was elected Mayor of Escobar in 1995 with 73% of the vote. Patti launched a new party in 1999, Unidad Bonaerense, now called Partido Unidad Federalista (PA.U.FE). He was re-elected in Escobar that year and stood to be Governor of Buenos Aires Province. Patti obtained second place, but was defeated by Felipe Solá of the Justicialist Party by a 40% margin. [3]
He ran for a seat in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 2005 on the same Federal Peronist ticket as Hilda González de Duhalde, candidate for the Senate, and was elected. However he was prevented from taking his seat because of the allegations against him, following a vote of the existing deputies. His replacement Dante Camaño, formerly a supporter of Duhalde's faction (opposed to president Kirchner), switched to the presidential faction of Peronism (the Front for Victory). [4]
In 2008, while Patti's actions during the 1970s were still under formal investigation, the Supreme Court of Argentina ruled against the decision of the Chamber of Deputies, saying that he should be allowed to take his seat in Congress. This caused controversy with the Cabinet Chief Alberto Fernández saying that there was a "conflict of powers" between the legislative and the judicial branches of government. [5]
Patti was ultimately convicted on April 14, 2010, for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment to be served in a regular prison facility; he admitted having a role in torture, albeit justifying his acts. Legislators from ARI, with government support, attempted to change Argentine law to prevent those accused of involvement from torture from taking public positions, a move which is highly accepted. [6]
On the night of December 27, 2006, Luis Gerez, a Peronist workers' activist who had testified before Congress that Patti was in charge of torture sessions he endured in 1972, was supposedly kidnapped, and re-appeared two days later, immediately after a televised presidential speech on the subject, and purportedly bearing signs of forced restraint and torture (which were in no way evident during his press conference, nor later). [7]
Public prosecutors were unable to find proof to support the hypothesis of a genuine abduction (telephone hearings implemented to track possible calls from the kidnappers indicated that Gerez himself, his concubine and political comrades maybe responsible), and consequently they have followed the theory of self-kidnapping. [8] [9] A medical examination of Gerez confirmed that he had been subjected to torture. [10] Gerez, who was recently given an office in the Buenos Aires Province Legislature, has recognized that it's possible to cast doubt on his abduction. “Thirty years where necessary to acknowledge that there was genocide in Argentina. People will need time to understand my abduction”, he said. [11]
Gerez had received threats since his testimony on April 20. His disappearance was interpreted by the government as a message from groups who resent the re-opening of cases against Dirty War criminals, following the disappearance of Jorge Julio López, a witness of the Miguel Etchecolatz trial who is missing since September 2006. Two others who testified in Congress against Patti, Orlando Ubiedo and Hugo Esteban Jaime, had received threats during November and December 2006. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Patti himself denied any involvement in the threats and the kidnapping of Gerez, and claimed not to remember if Gerez had been arrested under his custody because "it was 30 years ago". He accused others of making political use of the disappearance. [17]
Adolfo Rodríguez Saá is an Argentine Peronist politician. Born in a family that was highly influential in the history of the San Luis Province, he became the province's governor in 1983, after the end of the National Reorganization Process military dictatorship. He remained governor up to 2001, being re-elected in successive elections.
Pedro Eugenio Aramburu Silveti was an Argentine Army general. He was a major figure behind the Revolución Libertadora, the military coup against Juan Perón in 1955. He became dictator of Argentina, serving from November 13, 1955 to May 1, 1958. He was kidnapped by the radical organization Montoneros on May 29, 1970 and murdered, allegedly in retaliation for the June 1956 execution of General Juan José Valle, an army officer associated with the Peronist movement, and 26 Peronist militants after a botched attempt to overthrow his regime.
The Dirty War is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement.
The Federalist Union Party, initially named Party of Buenos Aires Unity, is a right-wing political party active in various provinces of Argentina. Its most visible leader is the former police chief, Luis Patti, former Mayor of Escobar, who is accused of torturing people during the last dictatorship.
José Luis Cabezas was an Argentine news photographer and reporter who worked for Noticias, a leading local newsmagazine. Cabezas gained notoriety after he was kidnapped and killed by people hired by Alfredo Yabrán in retaliation for having taken a photo of him in Pinamar –a seaside resort in Atlantic Coast– in February 1996. The photo, which displayed Yabrán and his wife, was published on the cover of Noticias magazine in March 1996, unveiling Yabrán's face to public.
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Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz was an Argentine police officer, who worked in the Buenos Aires Provincial Police during the first years of the military dictatorship of the 1970s. Etchecolatz was deeply involved in the "anti-subversion operation" known as the National Reorganization Process. He was first convicted in 1986 of crimes committed during this period, but passage that year of the Ley de Punto Final, which created amnesty for security officers, meant that he was released without a sentence. In 2003 Congress repealed the law, and the government re-opened prosecution of crimes during the Dirty War.
The Night of the Pencils, was a series of kidnappings and forced disappearances, followed by the torture, rape, and murder of a number of young students that began on the evening of 16 September 1976 and continued into the next day, during Argentina's last civil-military dictatorship.
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Jorge Julio López is an Argentine retired bricklayer who was kidnapped during the National Reorganization Process, and disappeared again during the democratic government of Néstor Kirchner after testifying in trial against dictatorship criminal Miguel Etchecolatz.
Alicia Domon was a French nun who was one of two French nationals in Argentina to be "disappeared" in December 1977 by the military dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process. She was among a dozen people associated with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group, who were kidnapped and taken to the secret detention center at ESMA.
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Federal Peronism, also known as Dissident Peronism and Menemism, are the informal names given to a conservative political alliance between Justicialist Party figures, currently identified mostly by its opposition to ruling Kirchnerism, the left-wing faction.
Luis Armando Espinoza, a 31-year-old Argentinian citizen, died during a police raid in the northern province of Tucumán, Argentina, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the country.
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The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina had an impact on the human rights situation in the country.
Alberto Edgardo Balestrini was an Argentine politician of the Justicialist Party. Balestrini held a number of important posts throughout his career: he served as Vice Governor of Buenos Aires Province under Daniel Scioli from 2007 to 2010, as President of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies from 2005 to 2007, and as intendente (mayor) of La Matanza from 1999 to 2005.
Graciela María Giannettasio de Saiegh was an Argentine politician belonging to the Justicialist Party. She served in a number of high-profile posts during her career, most notably as Minister of Education during the interim presidency of Eduardo Duhalde from 2002 to 2003, and later as Vice Governor of Buenos Aires Province under Felipe Solá from 2003 to 2007.
