«We prepared ourselves 40 years ago, the July hearing against the former judge did not start now, there were many tricks. We are prepared,” said Oscar Ragni about the advance statement in the Federal Oral Court that they will make together with Inés Rigo for the trial against himx Judge Pedro Laurentino Duarte and Prosecutor Victor Ortiz for his responsibility during the civic-military dictatorship.
Ragni recalled that the trials for crimes against humanity began in Neuquén in 2008. «What is going to be judged began more than 40 years ago. We have been living half of our lives with Inés, and with my family, what happens with the trial of the murderers of the process, “she said.
Ines is from the Neuquén and Alto Valle branch of Madres de Plaza de Mayo. When her son Oscar disappeared, she was running the business in the neighborhood where they still live. She immediately began inquiries at the police stations, the Command, the barracks (as the Engineer Battalion located in front of the old route 22 was popularly called) and she filed a habeas corpus request to be given information about the fate of the son of she.
When the OAS commission came (1979) for the complaints of forced disappearances, deaths and torture, Oscar Ragni went back to the courts to present evidence of the search.
“It strikes us that Justice is so slow and that the murderers, main actors are not authors. It is always condemned and years are added, but then it seems that things change and we start again and we must go back 40 years. We are going to go through those 40 years and continue until this ends, “said Oscar Ragni.
The hearing will be on Monday at 10 a.m. in the AMUC room that uses federal jurisdiction for complex cases, at Avenida Argentina 1 680. The trial for the responsibility of the judge and the prosecutor who are prosecuted for being participants in the plan for forced disappearances in the regionPedro Duarte and Victor Ortiz –respectively- still does not have a date.
The advance statements of the Ragni couple, as was the statement of Noemí Labrune and Guillermo Correa in June, are part of the requests of the complaints and the prosecution to preserve the evidence and data of the elderly people who are part of the cause.
Natalia Hormazábal, who sponsors Inés and Oscar Ragni, explained that “they are two mothers and fathers who are members of Human Rights organizations in the Region, their testimonies are extremely valuable, without them we would not get here, listening to the Ragni family is unprecedented in the country , they are references for human rights organizations, they share the search for their son, we are proud to accompany them here as complainants, “said the lawyer.
Hormazábal stressed that both took actions regarding the search for their son and were requiring judicial measures that never arrived since the disappearance of Oscar Ragni, on December 23, 1976.
“And judge or a former judge has sufficient legal knowledge to escape any type of trial or accusation, what they have done is harm us and we have a waiting time of more than 40 years,” Ragni criticized in relation to the delays in the trials and, in particular, the lack of a date and start of the oral debate in this eighth trial for the crimes committed during the dictatorship in the region.