The Secretariat of Human Rights has launched its website Crimes Against Humanity with information on all the cases against those involved in Argentina’s last dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983. It includes details on all the perpetrators that have been sentenced since 1985. 

“Trials against humanity in real time,” a website that followed the hearings of each trial in real-time, was launched as a tool in 2021. Now the Crimes Against Humanity website adds information on each case, including all of those who have already received sentences, and those that remain open. 

Over the past few years, victims and organizations have denounced that courts are delaying the proceedings — which, at this point, means that many of the responsible die without standing trial. The new website includes information that civilians can use to follow up on each of the processes. 

“The website puts the consequences of delays in concrete numbers,” Human Rights Secretary Horacio Pietragalla told the Herald.

 “We show that each day there are fewer and fewer defendants being sentenced: the paradigmatic case is the “Las Brigadas” trial. When it began in 2020, there were 30 defendants, but 13 have died since, or were removed from the process due to health issues.”

The ongoing Las Brigadas trial encompasses crimes committed in three police brigades across Buenos Aires province (Banfield, Quilmes, and Lanús).

“We are offering a tool to account for the time each trial takes,” he said. “With concrete numbers, we can denounce the delay in the trials and the risks that this implies. In this way, many repressors and civilian accomplices die unpunished, as in the case of businessman Carlos Blaquier.”

Blaquier owned one of the country’s main producers of sugar, the Ledesma corporation, and was accused in 2012 of committing crimes against humanity in his province, Jujuy, during the 1970s. He died in March without standing trial.

The records of the 319 trials with sentences are now available, from the historic 1985 ‘Trial of the Juntas’ to the recently-begun “Palazzesi” trial, when three Peronist activists were kidnapped and tortured, and one died. 

Across all the trials so far, 1146 people have been convicted and there have been 253 acquittals.

The cases are moving forward, but time is running out. Today, there are 14 oral trials taking place in 7 provinces. 

The website is a multidisciplinary project that gathers data from across different areas dedicated to human rights. It was built with data provided by  journalists, lawyers, researchers, prosecutors, teachers, experts in data visualization, developers and archivists.

The website uses databases from the Human Rights Secretariat and the National Public Prosecutor’s Office as well as other prosecuting authorities. Information from victim support and human rights organizations was also collated. 

It also includes collaborations with different artists, with illustrations of the trials and creating the Microrrelatos (short stories), one of the original sections of the website, and of the Haroldo Conti Cultural Center of Memory.

“This work is a timeline of the landmarks of our memory, truth, and justice process,” Pietragalla said.