In a resolution that sets a historic precedent in the cleansing of institutions, the Social Security Institute (IPS) of the Province of Buenos Aires has ordered the genocidal Daniel Eduardo Robelo to return more than $7.7 million improperly received under the concept of "Honorary Pension" for Malvinas ex-combatants.

This decision is not a simple administrative formality; it is an act of restorative justice that definitively separates the honor of the soldiers from the atrocity of the oppressors .

1. Deceiving the State and Society

For years, Robelo —who was Head of the Communications Department of the Submarine Force and Aide-de-Camp to the Navy between 1975 and 1977—enjoyed a benefit intended for those who defended national sovereignty. However, while collecting this "honorary" pension, the courts were proving his participation in the repressive network at the Mar del Plata Naval Base , where crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty, torture, and murder were committed.

2. Why should you return the money?

Resolution 11.737/2026 is clear: the right to receive a Malvinas pension is subject to the ethical and legal conduct of the beneficiary . With the confirmation of his life sentence for crimes against humanity in 2018, the "honorary" nature of his pension was retroactively annulled.

3. The Malvinas and the Dictatorship: The same repressive matrix

As we have argued for years in Agenda Malvinas , one cannot separate the military officer who tortured in clandestine centers from the officer who, on the islands, subjected his own soldiers to beatings and other forms of abuse . Robelo embodies this duality: the man who claimed honors for a war while concealing his role as a cog in the machinery of state terrorism.

"One cannot be a hero and a genocidal maniac in the same time and place. Honor cannot be bestowed upon someone who violated the most basic human rights of their own people." Malvinas Agenda

4. A message for the future

This ruling is a victory for human rights organizations and veterans' centers fighting to remove the perpetrators of the Malvinas War from their political views. It sends a powerful message: the State will not finance the retirement of those who kidnapped, tortured, and disappeared people.

This case opens the door to reviewing other files . If Robelo must return the money he received, it raises questions about other convicted officers and non-commissioned officers who are still receiving benefits related to the Malvinas War. Transparency in the veterans' registry is an outstanding debt that, thanks to rulings like this one, is now beginning to be paid.

The Mar del Plata Naval Base as a Clandestine Detention Center (CCD)

To understand Daniel Eduardo Robelo 's life sentence, we must look at what was happening in the Submarine Force and the Mar del Plata Naval Base during the last dictatorship. This location functioned as the heart of Subzone 15 , under the operational control of the Argentine Navy.

The Repressive Circuit: The Base and "The Cave"

The Naval Base did not act alone . It was part of a system of clandestine centers that included the Marine Corps NCO School (ESIM) and the center known as "The Cave" (former Air Force radar).

As Head of Communications and Aide-de-Camp, Robelo occupied a crucial position in the transmission of information and the logistics of the repression . He was not an unrelated "administrator"; he was part of the chain of command that managed the life and death of the detainees.

Workers, students, lawyers (many of them kidnapped in the famous "Night of the Ties" ) and social activists passed through there.