Neuquén’s Federal Court has sentenced former judge Pedro Duarte and former prosecutor Víctor Ortiz to 11 years in prison for dismissing complaints and habeas corpus filed by the families of people who disappeared during Argentina’s last dictatorship, which allowed repressors to carry out kidnappings, torture and murder with impunity. 

This is the first conviction condemning judiciary officials in Neuquén province, although there have been similar rulings in other provinces in recent years.

The trial began in October 2023 and investigated crimes committed by the former judge and prosecutor against 22 victims during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

Duarte and Ortiz each received 11-year jail sentences for failing to pursue legal action as well as aiding and abetting the illegal detainment of the victims carried out by public officials. 

Judges also found that Duarte had deliberately and unlawfully closed cases and acquitted people based on false information. 

Before their sentences were read out via Zoom, the defendants called for the judges to absolve them and said they were being “demonized” by the plaintiffs.

Duarte was in the army and had served as a Mountain Infantry Brigade chief in Neuquén before being appointed a judge in August 1976. He remained in that position until September 1984. Ortiz was a federal prosecutor between September 1976 and April 1985.

The prosecution had stated that Duarte and Ortiz offered “essential help” to the military, local and federal police, and the penitentiary service, allowing them to commit crimes such as illegal arrests and detentions, torture, forced disappearance, and murder, according to Argentina’s Human Rights Secretariat.

Most of the 22 victims were kept illegally detained at the clandestine detention center known as La Escuelita (“The Little School”), which operated on Army property. More than half of them remain disappeared.