Argentina’s Federal Chamber of Cassation has upheld the dismissal of the charges of crimes against humanity of Rodolfo Martín Villa, who was Minister of Trade Union Relations and Home Affairs (Minister of the Interior) in Spain’s first governments after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. The court made this decision by a vote of two to one, according to this Monday’s resolution to which EL PAÍS had access. The judges have therefore dismissed the appeal of proponents of the so-called “Argentine complaint” about Franco’s repression, who had managed to get Judge María Servini de Cubria to charge the former UCD leader with four police killings in October 2021, committed in the 1970s A decision that was reversed two months later.
The long legal dispute in Argentina is thus writing a new chapter. After the prosecution and defense presented their arguments to the Federal Chamber last week, the Federal Chamber ruled that the former’s appeal against the Argentine Court of Appeal’s decision last December that overturned the judge’s indictment of Martín Villa was “inadmissible”. ‘ explains Servini. This court of second instance has already found that the evidence collected by the teacher against the 87-year-old former minister, who received the written support of all former Presidents of the Government of Democracy and 15 other former political leaders and trade unions.
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The majority of the federal courts ruled that the appeal cannot be allowed because the appellate court’s ruling does not constitute a final judgment or order terminating the action, the judgment, or making it impossible for the proceeding to proceed.” That means you can continue the investigation However, the third judge took a different view: in his opinion, the allegations of the prosecution should have been accepted and the case should have been remanded to the second instance court for a new decision the dismissal of the indictment for lack of evidence did not “completely and reasonably examine” all documents appearing in the case.
Last October, Judge Servini ruled to indict Martín Villa on four police murders committed in the early years after Franco’s death that were improperly tried in Spain. These events include the deaths of three workers shot dead by armed police in Vitoria on March 3, 1976, the worst massacre caused by the forces of order during the transition, and the death of another person killed by the agents was shot dead in the Sanfermines of Pamplona in 1978. Servini considered Martín Villa “prima facie [a primera vista]criminally responsible perpetrator of the crime of aggravated homicide” of these four victims of repression.
Martín Villa then went on the offensive. His defense, conducted in Spain by Jesús Santos – from the prestigious Baker McKenzie law firm and advocate for, among others, María Dolores de Cospedal, former General Secretary of the PP; and Francisco González, former president of BBVA—, appealed to the Court of Appeals. And that court, just two months after Servini made an “error of legal classification,” concluded that it considered Martín Villa to be the “mediated author” of these crimes “because of the dominance of an organized apparatus of power.”
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Processing was aborted. The Court of Appeal rejected that the deaths attributed to the former minister during the transition constituted crimes against humanity – a type of crime that allowed Martín Villa to be prosecuted in application of the principle of universal justice. Furthermore, the court warned that it was not possible to “relax the evidence requirements”: “The truth is that the existence of a power apparatus is at Villa’s full disposal, which allows issuing orders (in this case to the police) to him to be regarded as the indirect originator of the facts examined here,” it said.
However, the public prosecutor’s office appealed to the Bundesrat because the second-instance court had misjudged the evidence. In his opinion, the case contains enough evidence to proceed against Martín Villa and to show that “crimes against humanity existed”: “The factual basis for which Martín Villa was initially charged and subsequently prosecuted by Judge Servini cannot be delineated or separated are from the factual basis itself, which is duly recognized throughout this criminal proceeding after proving beyond reasonable doubt that the specific facts supporting the indictment and prosecution need to be contextualized and/or generalized against the civilian population as a systematic attack”.
The case against Martín Villa opened in 2014 and since then the former minister has consistently defended his innocence. He even refused to take advantage of the 1977 amnesty law, declaring as a defendant in September 2020 via video conference from the Argentine embassy in Madrid: “I have come to defend myself because I rebel, living on the presumption of guilt rather than to.” live presumption of innocence, but above all to defend that there cannot possibly be genocide in transition,” he said. The former UCD leader also explained that the deaths under investigation occurred in a context of high social conflict, adding: “Spain did not go to bed one Francoist day and get up democratic or constitutional the next.”
In a letter sent to the Federal Chamber for Criminal Cassation in the last few days, Martín Villa emphasizes: “[En] During the Spanish transition to democracy, a period in which I was part of the government, there was far from a systematic plan to eliminate opponents, quite the opposite: a process of reconciliation among the Spaniards and the restoration of freedoms was carried out “. The former minister explains that he was not responsible for the police in the Vitoria massacre. And he adds that after the Pamplona crime, he took action within the corps to crack down on those responsible.”