National deputy Lourdes Arrieta has put the internal strife of La Libertad Avanza on full display, resigning from the ruling party caucus in the lower house minutes before she looked set to be expelled.
Arrieta, 31, announced Tuesday that she had quit the libertarian party and created a new “mono-bloc” which will be called “Fuerzas del cielo - Espacio liberal” (Forces of Heaven - Liberal Space).
With this departure, the ruling caucus will be left with just 37 legislators in the 257-seat chamber.
The lawmaker jumped before she was pushed. Arrieta’s former party colleagues are unhappy with the lawmaker after she leaked a series of draft bills and a draft presidential decree drawn up by libertarian deputies working to free prisoners convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Last week, Arrieta published WhatsApp chat messages exposing her fellow-deputies organising a controversial visit to ex-military convicts at Ezeiza Prison.
“Now I place at disposal the bills and decree proposed by the WhatsApp group of [LLA deputies] to oblige the judges to free the genocides,” she wrote online, deepening an already damaging scandal facing the caucus.
The draft bills seek to cut the period for convicting crimes to a maximum of 25 years while clearing "progressive mechanisms for advance release" and forcing judges to free prisoners.
Given the certainty of her expulsion from the existing “forces of heaven,” the young deputy continued ventilating the internal issues of the Whatsapp group created last February by libertarian deputies in conjunction with Father Javier Olivera Ravasi, son of Major Jorge Antonio Olivera, who is under house arrest for having participated in crimes against humanity and on the run for four years.
Arrieta tweeted screenshots of each page of the government bills, denouncing her fellow-deputies: “Attempted impunity for those responsible for crimes against humanity. THAT’S NOT THE AGENDA OF PRESIDENT @JMilei. I’m absolutely clear that these bills have nothing to do with the ideals of liberty. I will not permit laws to be manipulated behind Milei’s back.”
Via her X account, the deputy published a draft bill entitled "Reasonable Period" seeking to release individuals convicted for crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship who are still imprisoned 20 years after committing the crime.
The draft bill establishes: “Incorporate into Subsection 8 of Article 59 of the Argentine Criminal Code, Law 11,179, the following text: ‘After 20 years have transpired since the state became aware, via a trial, of the commission of a crime without a judicial sentence regarding the same, that period exceeds any maximum in national and international jurisprudence until now, being the maximum period for the statute of limitations for legal action as prescribed in Article 62, Subsection 2 of the Criminal Code P for crimes liable for life imprisonment as well as being comfortably ahead of the times ordered by the procedural norms for each stage of the trial and the reading of resolutions."
The deputy also published a decree bidding for the approval of President Javier Milei, which was proposed by libertarian legislators after their meetings with Father Javier Olivera Ravasi and a group of specialised lawyers.
According to the details of the writ, the intention is to guarantee the release of those former military officers imprisoned for 25 years or more after committing the crime.
"Independently of the criterion fixed by each national or federal court as to the times for guaranteeing the judgement of a person or respecting civil rights within a reasonable period, the maximum period for the duration of a criminal trial should be fixed at 25 years," argues the first article, formalising that “this fixed maximum period should extend to trials for crimes against humanity where the sentence has not been upheld.”
It is further pointed out that the period "will run from the date of the commission of the crime or of the victim reaching their majority of age if a minor while the count will be suspended should the Nation suffer an interruption of democratic life via any of the authorities of the three branches of government being illegally deposed.”
“Should this fixed maximum period expire, the criminal action will become extinct,” the deputies point out, founding their argument with "the size and number of the trials for crimes against humanity overrunning the agenda of federal courts, entrusted with investigating corruption and drug-trafficking nationwide,” insisting that “decongesting the work of the federal courts is indispensable.”
After broadcasting these norms, Arrieta explained the bills “have nothing to do with the ideals of liberty.”
"I will not permit laws to be manipulated behind [President] Milei’s back," she concluded.
Lemoine cancels Lourdes
Amid the controversy, LLA deputy Lilia Lemoine blasted Lourdes Arrieta, demanding her expulsion from Congress and describing the controversy as an “operetta from Kirchnerism.”
Arrieta “always said that she knew nothing about the meeting nor where they were taking her. I said that she was lying when she said that she did not know where she was going because she was in that group and I knew," said Lemoine in an interview with the LN+ news channel.
Lemoine took aim at her as the leak for the conversations exposing how the controversial prison visit was organising.
"They’re going to kick her out of the caucus, at the very least. I’m asking that she be expelled from Congress for making a false denunciation of gender violence against another deputy,” she said.
Arrieta has accused Lower House Speaker Martín Menem of signing off on the visit and was at the centre of a scandalous meeting in Congress last week that ended with threats, screams and the denunciation of fellow-deputy Nicolás Mayoraz last week.
Bullrich denial
Meanwhile, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich has denied having facilitated the visit of government deputies to visit the dictatorship criminals at Ezeiza Prison.
Arrieta had previously suggested Bullrich had approved the visit, along with Federal Penitentiary Service chief Fernando Martínez.
"That’s as false as false can be. I learned about the visit of the deputies in the newspapers," maintained Bullrich in dialogue with the Córdoba radio Cadena 3.
Bullrich assured that the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF. in its Spanish acronym) "only did what the law says" in permitting a deputy to enter with a mobile telephone to register the visit.
"If a deputy presents themselves to the SPF and requests entry, they have to let them in because that’s what the law says. So neither the SPF nor in my case, since I did not even find out because nobody called me nor communicated with me," said the PRO leader.
Bullrich insisted that the controversial visit of the LLA deputies "was within the law" and that it is a "total and absolute lie" that she or the SPF had been involved.
The participants of the meeting which triggered the controversy – and a crisis within the caucus – were Beltrán Benedit, María Fernanda Araujo, Guillermo Montenegro, Alida Ferreyra, Arrieta and Rocío Bonacci.
They visited Alfredo Astiz, former intelligence agent Raúl Guglielminetti, Carlos Guillermo Suárez Mason Jr. (a former naval officer responsible for crimes against humanity at ESMA Navy Mechanics School like Astiz), Adolfo Donda (another former naval officer who forcibly adopted Victoria Donda) and Antonio Pernías, among others.
– TIMES/NA
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