Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has reiterated her “lawfare” charges against the Mauricio Macri presidency before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH in its Spanish acronym), accusing Argentina’s previous government of "political discrimination and persecution."
The charges specifically refer to the case concerning the 2013 Memorandum with Iran, a deal the former president agreed with the Islamic Republic during her second term as president. She would later be accused of attempting to cover up Tehran’s alleged responsibility for the 1994 terrorist bomb destruction of the AMIA Jewish community centre.
The writ – which state news agency Télam said had been filed by the vice-president’s lawyers Graciana Peñafort and Alejandro Rúa – charges that Fernández de Kirchner and her family were “direct victims” as the result of the Macri government’s “irregular” legal actions, not only “gravely affecting” her political rights but also destroying the health of her foreign minister Héctor Timerman “to the point of killing him.”
Timerman succumbed to cancer on the penultimate day of 2018.
According to reports by those who have seen the document, Peñafort and Rúa have asked the commission not to confine their attention to these cases but to address the whole problem of "lawfare" in the region, a reference to allied regional leaders who have found themselves in trouble with the courts, such as former Brazil president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In the brief, the two lawyers cite comments last week from Federal Criminal Cassation Court Judge Ana María Figueroa, who implied in an interview with Radio AM 750 that she had been unduly pressured by the Macri government in the case of the memorandum with Iran. The judge said she had rebuffed the offer.
– TIMES
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