The photo sends shivers down your spine. Taken on July 11 at the federal prison in Ezeiza, about thirty kilometers from Buenos Aires, we see six deputies from Javier Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), smiling next to the detainees, all of them elderly. The latter, fifteen in total, were convicted of committing crimes against humanity including kidnapping, torture, forced disappearances and rape during the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983). According to the investigation carried out on this visit by the Argentine magazine CrisisThe meeting lasted several hours and took place in a common room in unit 31 of the penitentiary where these inmates are held.
One of the most infamous, Alfredo Astiz, nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” was sentenced to life in prison in absentia in France in 1990 for the 1977 disappearance of French nuns Alice Domont and Léonie Duquet. In 2011 and again in 2017, he was again sentenced to life in prison in Argentina. According to CrisisThat afternoon of July 11 in Ezeiza, he would not have uttered a single word during the entire meeting.
Made under the auspices of “humanitarian visit” in order to“observe the living conditions of the detainees”As one of the organizers, deputy Beltrán Benedit, confirmed afterwards, this visit, revealed by the newspaper Page 12 The 17th of July caused a stir in Argentina, especially because it was of an official nature. In fact, a formal request was made to the Lower House for a vehicle to guarantee the transport of elected officials to prison.
As the controversy grew, embarrassing Javier Milei’s government, LLA deputy Lourdes Arrieta, present during the visit to Ezeiza, dropped a real bomb on her X account on Sunday, August 25. The parliamentarian – who resigned from the LLA on Tuesday – published screenshots of a conversation on WhatsApp that trace the genesis of this visit. Among the members of this messaging group we find legislators but also lawyers and magistrates.
“Marxist subversion”
The exchanges show in particular that Javier Olivera Ravasi, a far-right YouTuber priest and son of Jorge Olivera, sentenced three times to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, in particular for the disappearance of another French woman, Marie-Anne Erize, is at the origin of this initiative with Beltrán Benedit.
In the discussion, the objective of the priest and the deputy appears clear: to pressure the executive to adopt legislation that allows the release of some of the elderly detainees or those awaiting sentencing. “We visited veterans who fought the battle against Marxist subversion”Beltrán Benedit would have justified in a document that circulated on WhatsApp.
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