The Court rejected a proposal by Cristina Kirchner and left firm the departure of a judge in the case of the Memorandum with Iran

Cristina Kirchner

The Supreme Court of Justice dismissed an appeal by Vice President Cristina Kirchner in which she questioned the departure of a judge in the case known as “Memorandum with Iran.” The decision comes two weeks after the Federal Court of Cassation ordered the oral trial to move forward and the defenses appealed in the last hours for the highest court to stop or annul that decision.

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The appeal that the Court analyzed had to do with the removal of Judge Sabrina Namer, who had been a prosecutor in the AMIA Prosecutorial Unit as soon as the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman took place. When the case went to oral trial, Namer had already been appointed judge and was a member of the Federal Oral Court No. 8 (TOF 8), drawn to intervene in the case due to the signing of the Memorandum with Iran, promoted by Nisman.

In this context, Mario Averbuch and Luis Czyzewski, relatives of the Victims of the AMIA Attack, and the representative of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA) demanded the removal of Namer. According to them, the participation of the judge did not guarantee the greatest possible objectivity to judge the understanding agreement.

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The proposals were rejected by the remaining members of TOF 8, who considered that, to remove the judge, none of the grounds expressly provided for in article 55 of the National Criminal Procedure Code were invoked. But the complaints presented appeals that were also rejected. The case was then brought as a complaint by Averbuch and Czyzewski for review by the highest federal criminal court.

On June 19, 2018, Chamber IV of the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation accepted the claim and removed Namer from the case. The decision was made by majority by judges Mariano Hernán Borinsky (who voted in dissent), Juan Carlos Gemignani and Gustavo Hornos. “It is in a case like this that, in matters of impartiality, appearances – in the sense that the term gives it to the ECHR – play a fundamental role in the sense that the judge must not only be impartial, but also appear to be impartial,” Horns wrote.

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That was why the defense of Cristina Kirchner and Oscar Parrilli, on the one hand, and Luis D’Elía, on the other, sought for the Court to revoke the decision.

They arrived to complain to the fourth floor of the courts, where this afternoon the Court, with the signature of the ministers Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, Juan Carlos Maqueda and Ricardo Lorenzetti, rejected the claim. In addition, they were ordered to “make the deposit provided for in art. 286 of the National Civil and Commercial Procedure Code, at the order of this Court and under warning of execution.”

The Supreme Court’s decision comes two weeks after the Federal Court of Cassation ordered the Vice President of the Nation, Cristina Kirchner, to be tried for this file, in a decision that – in parallel – also ordered to reopen the Hotesur-Los case. Willows. The ruling was signed by the judges of Chamber I of Cassation, Diego Barroetaveña and Daniel Petrone, who also ordered the removal of the three judges who at the end of 2021 had said that the understanding agreement had been a non-judicial political issue and They signed the dismissal of all those involved.

Cassation must shortly define who will be the judges who will carry out this trial. In an area where there are plenty of vacancies for oral court judges, for this reason five are already out: Namer and Nicolas Toselli, regular members of the Federal Oral Court 8 (one challenged and the other excused); and those who voted to dismiss CFK Gabriela López Iñiguez, Daniel Obligado and José Michelini.

In the last few hours, the vice president and the rest of the defendants presented their challenges to the Cassation decision to hold the trial. CFK affirmed that the decision is null because only two judges voted, after the departure of Ana María Figueroa, who turned 75 and was dismissed by the Court.

Now the ruling party in the Senate voted for his return and President Alberto Fernández validated it with a decree that will be published in the next few hours. The decision on the appeals of those involved in the Memorandum case will be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Treasury Attorney Carlos Zannini is asking for the removal of its members.

The case began in January 2015 with the complaint presented by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who maintained that with the signing of the Memorandum between Argentina and Iran, an attempt was made to cover up those accused of the attack on the AMIA because it caused Interpol’s red arrest alerts to fall. that weighed on them. Four days after he filed the complaint, Nisman was found dead in his apartment in Puerto Madero with a gunshot wound to the head. In the case instructed by the late judge Claudio Bonadio, Cristina Fernández, Eduardo Antonio Zuain, Carlos Alberto Zannini, Oscar Isidro Parrilli, Angelina María Esther Abbona, Juan Martín Mena, Andrés Larroque, Luis Ángel D’Elía, Fernando Esteche, Jorge were prosecuted. Alejandro Khalil and Ramón Héctor Allan Bogado.

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