Deputies of the Civic Coalition filed a criminal complaint against the Secretary of Human Rights of the Nation, Horacio Pietragalla, for covering up the abuses in the isolation centers that the Formosa government set up for people with coronavirus and their close contacts.
“We initiated a criminal complaint for cover-up. All the material we collected will go to that complaint and others that are turning,” said Deputy Mónica Frade in statements to Rivadavia radio.
Frade was a member of the Juntos por el Cambio delegation that traveled to Formosa to visit the questioned facilities of the Gildo Insfrán government and to meet with people who denounced human rights violations.
That judicial presentation was made this Friday afternoon. The 26-page writing makes a record of the episodes that have occurred in recent months as a result of the COVID-19 infections in the province governed by Gildo Insfrán.
They begin with the “stranded” in the limits of the province, then they speak of the creation of massive isolation centers, which they call “detainees without a competent judge’s order,” followed by the detention of opposition councilors who claimed for violations of rights in those places.
They emphasize the requests for federal intervention presented by opposition deputies and the role played by Amnesty International, which in a harsh letter denounced that the human rights of the people of Formosa had been violated. As well as the proclamation of Catholic bishops and the request for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to pronounce itself.
The complaint explains in detail the unusual episode of a doctor who was raided because he had allegedly stolen a towel from an isolation center. In it they reproduce the denunciations of Dr. Héctor López Cano during his hunger strike.
– “My protest was for the excess time in quarantine and the excess of swabs: they made me do five, all negative. Upon entering the province after having gone to see my family in Corrientes, after 10 months, I did a swab in Corrientes and two in Formosa, upon entering again“.
– “I completed the 15 days and the ones I did were valid, but for the province I needed two more. Forced seclusion was necessary, which is not isolation. I was in a hotel in poor condition where I could not see the light and they would not let me go out into the hall, they had police permanently in custody“.
– “I repeat that it is not a preventive isolation because I never had COVID-19, despite attending patients they had. They changed my hotel, I had better conditions, but the police harassment began. It was a daily psychological torture of those who guarded me“.
López Cano was only able to leave the preventive isolation centers before the visit of the Secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla. “It is visible that his description corresponds to a situation of detention, without a judge’s order, that is, illegal,” the deputies point out in their complaint.
For that reason, from the Civic Coalition they ask that “the possible commission of the crimes of Abuse of Authority, Violation of the Duties of Public Officials and Concealment be investigated.”
They targeted Pietragalla because the national official traveled to Formosa last week and downplayed the growing complaints. “There is no systematic violation of human rights in Formosa, it is almost a joke,” said the Secretary of Human Rights at the end of his mission.
“The Secretary of Human Rights should have acted ex officio, as of March 2020, on the occasion of the more than 8000 victims prevented from entering his province. The display of an inadmissible power by the governor must have had that immediate limit. It did not happen “, they mark.
And they add that, in addition, Pietragalla “should have exercised the right to join the legal cases initiated, as a complainant, to contribute to a restoration of the exercise of rights by the ‘stranded'”.
The complainants reproach him for having looked the other way with the events in Formosa, an attitude diametrically opposed to that which he had in other cases linked to causes of corruption K. “He presented himself as amicus curiae in two court cases, requesting the home arrest of Ricardo Jaime —who not only has several convictions against him for different crimes against the Public Administration, but was also convicted of the “Once tragedy” – and Martín Báez , who is serving preventive detention for being suspected of having committed money laundering. “
“After the public knowledge of all these complaints, it should – ex officio – exercise its competence to immediately verify the existence of these facts. Neither did it”, question the deputies.
And they point to the figure of potential cover-up. “In the event that the actions of the responsible officials of the Government of Formosa constitute illicit acts perpetrated on the occasion of managing the preventive sanitary isolation rules, the omission of a complaint by the Secretary for Human Rights and, therefore, the omission complaints clearly constitute the crime of Concealment, aggravated by the circumstances set forth in article 277, subsection 2 d), of the Penal Code “.
According to the draw, the case was in the hands of the Federal Criminal and Correctional Court 3. The presentation bears the signatures of the national deputies Frade, Maximiliano Ferraro, Juan Manuel López, Marcela Campagnoli, Paula Oliveto, Mariana Zuvic, Héctor “Toti” Flores , Alicia Terada, Lucila Lehmann and Javier Campos.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/deputies-of-the-civic-coalition-denounced-horacio-pietragalla-for-covering-up-the-abuses-in-formosa/
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