In another act of denial and political complicity, the Senate appointed a new official to a key position. He is Juan Manuel Gestoso Presas , a retired military officer with a dark past , appointed Deputy Director General of Audit and Management Control by Vice President Victoria Villarruel.
The election, which has raised public questions, refers to a judicial episode that still leaves several wounds open in the justice process for crimes against humanity during the last military dictatorship.
Gestoso Presas , a former intelligence officer , was prosecuted in Salta in 2008 for ordering the burning of maternity records at the Military Hospital in that province. The documents had been discovered during an operation and contained birth records from the early 1970s through 1997.
For prosecutors, the destruction of these books was linked to concealing testimonies that could have facilitated the identification of minors born in captivity and appropriated during the dictatorship , a crime related to crimes against humanity.
The legal proceedings against Gestoso Presas, however, concluded in 2014 with a dismissal ruling . The reason was that the statute of limitations had expired , as the court ruled that the removal and possible destruction of the records did not qualify as imprescriptible crimes, as there was a criterion that they did not constitute a crime against humanity in and of themselves , but rather an action intended to obstruct justice.
The officer, who at the time was still in charge of the Army's 5th Intelligence Company , had been accused of ordering his subordinate, Silvio Mannino Leal, to burn the books . This, according to the investigation, never materialized , as Mannino Leal pretended to obey the order and kept the documents at his home.
The figure of Gestoso Presas himself is linked to Claudio Gallardo, current Director General of Senate Security and one of the vice president's closest collaborators . Gallardo , who was a comrade-in-arms of Villarruel's father, was also an Army officer with ties to intelligence , and had relations with César Milani, former head of the Army under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner , whose past actions also generated strong controversy.
The Ministry of Defense, then headed by Nilda Garré, received the books that Mannino Leal had kept , and a criminal complaint and an internal investigation were filed. Immediately, the Hospital Director, Carlos Fernando Tozzeto Aria, and Gestoso Presas himself, practically in an act of confession, were removed from office.
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