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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Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem on Trial

Former Argentine President facing arms trafficking trial

Published in: Legalbrief TodayDate: Tue 21 October 2008Category: CriminalIssue No: 2179

Former Argentinian President Carlos Menem goes on trial this week for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to smuggle weapons to Croatia and Ecuador while both countries were involved in wars.

Menem (78), a two-term president (1989-1999), faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted on all charges, according to a report on the IoL site.

The case centres around three decrees Menem signed authorising the shipment of about 6 500 tons of weapons to Panama and Venezuela, the report says. The true final destination, however, was Croatia and Ecuador. Menem publicly acknowledged signing the three decrees, but insists the transaction was legal.

This Report from Legal Briefs


Details of the weapons shipments surfaced during a judicial investigation and were made public by the prosecutors.

Menem publicly acknowledged signing the three decrees, but insists the transaction was legal because the weapons were being sent to peaceful countries.

• The weapons to Croatia were sent in seven shipments aboard freighters between 1991 and 1995.
• At the time much of the Balkans was under a United Nations arms embargo following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
• The weapons sent to Ecuador arrived aboard three flights in February 1995. At the time Ecuador was engaged in a border war with Peru, and Argentina was banned from selling weapons to either side because it was one of the guarantors of a peace agreement the two nations signed ending an earlier war in 1942.
• Prosecutors estimate that the government lost some 123 million dollars in the illegal transactions, though the amount could be higher because one attorney believes that there were further shipments previously unaccounted for.

Witnesses scheduled to testify in the case include former presidents Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989) and Fernando De la Rua (1999-2001), both from the social-democratic Radical party, court sources said.

Menem enjoys immunity from imprisonment - but not from prosecution - as senator for his birth province of La Rioja.

Any sentence he might incur would not be served until his senate term expires in 2014, unless he resigns or is fired by his peers. Menem earlier spent five months under house arrest in 2001 on charges of masterminding the arms deals, but was set free by a Supreme Court ruling.

The case against Menem was filed again after president Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) replaced all the High Court members.

Also implicated in the alleged smuggling operation are former defense ministers Oscar Camilion and the late Antonio Erman Gonzalez, late foreign minister Guido Di Tella, former air force chief Juan Paulik and a dozen lesser officials.

Full report on the IoL site