“Arsenales (II) – Jefatura de Policía (II)”: the repressive mechanism on trial

Abstract

This article aims to give an account of the genesis and development of the judicial process for crimes against humanity, called “Megacausa Arsenales (II) – Jefatura de Policía (II)”, which took place in the province of Tucumán, Argentina, during the years 2012 and 2013. This was one of the most important criminal trials in the jurisdiction because of the number of defendants and of victims whose cases were being judged. Besides, the Megacausa put in debate the functioning of the main clandestine detentions centers that existed in Tucumán between 1975 and 1983. Throughout this text, we try to reflect on the alternatives developed for the concretion of this criminal trial, and the demands of human’s rights activists, who tried to prove on trial the existence, during the State terrorism, of a repressive mechanism in order to kidnap, torture and disappear people. For that
purpose, they used an important amount of evidence –experts, witnesses and documents– gathered during decades of their fight for justice. For the victims and their relatives, this trial symbolized the possibility of showing the dimension of the horror
lived in Tucuman during the seventies.