Carlos Menem Charged With Weapons Trafficking

BUENOS AIRES, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Former Argentine President Carlos Menem was charged with weapons smuggling in a trial he attended via videoconference on Friday due to health problems. Menem, 78, was allowed to attend the trial on live video in his hometown in La Rioja province due to "anemia and stress."

• He is charged with having signed presidential decrees authorizing weapons sales to Venezuela and Panama, knowing those arms would end up in Ecuador and Croatia.
• Argentina was barred from supplying Ecuador with weapons after a brief war between Ecuador and Peru in 1995, while arms embargo to Croatia was internationally observed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1995.

Apart from Menem, former Defense Minister Oscar Camilion, Menem's former brother-in-law Emir Yoma and former chief of the Air Forces Brigadier Juan Paulik, are also being tried for the same crime.

Menem's lawyer Maximiliano Rusconi denied the charges, saying that the decrees Menem signed were of legal exports to Panama and Venezuela.

• Even if the weapons ended up in Ecuador and Croatia, that was because "the presidential decree was not followed," Rusconi said.
• "What was ordered by the former President Menem was totally contrary to what happened, and the customs and military are the ones that are supposed to give explanations to the event," said the lawyer.

Meanwhile, many former army officers who are accused of the same crime said that Menem should be responsible, because by themselves they couldn't have been able to do such a big maneuver which included seven maritime and three aerial transportation from1991 to 1995.

The weapons that arrived in Ecuador and Croatia included anti-tank missiles, hand grenades, land mines and rockets, prosecutors said.

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