Buenos Aires city mayor Mauricio Macri is sending two members of the Metropolitan Police to El Salvador to participate in a counterterrorism seminar at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), which human rights groups have called a “new School of the Americas”.

The seminar, called the Law Enforcement Management Development Program, will take place from 14th-23rd June, and cover topics such as money laundering and border control.

But the Law of Public Security 2894, which created the Metropolitan Police, does not grant jurisdiction over such duties.

The city Observatory on Human Rights (ODH) said in a press release that the mayor is “once again violating the law” and that the city government, “instead of reinforcing public policies to resolve the problems of insecurity, is mistakenly focusing on activities that don’t necessarily correspond with the current objectives of the Metropolitan Police.”

A member of the Metropolitan Police close to Eugenio Burzaco, the force’s current chief, said in comments to Página 12 that “it’s not just about drug trafficking and counterterrorism. Besides, Buenos Aires has had two [terrorist] attacks. It’s good that the police are trained.”

Macri’s attempts to police the city have been mired in controversy since early in his term. Jorge ‘Fino’ Palacios, Macri’s initial choice to head the Metropolitan Police, has been indicted for espionage and illicit association stemming from his role in an illegal wire-tapping case, for which Macri himself is now under investigation. Human rights groups have denounced the actions of the Public Space Control Unit (UCEP), Macri’s ‘task force’, which included brutal forced evictions. And Macri’s decision to outfit the Metropolitan Police with electric taser guns has been met with widespread public concern.

Similarly, the ILEA has raised alarm with human rights groups since its semi-secret inception in 2005. The US Department of Homeland Security denied a 2007 Freedom of Information Act request for the school’s course materials and names of graduates, saying releasing such materials, “could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.”

The ILEA’s refusal to release course materials and students’ names makes it impossible to track the human rights records of its graduates, according to the website of Washington, D.C.-based human rights organisation School of the Americas Watch.

The School of the Americas (SOA), renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001, was originally established in Panama by the US Army in 1946, and has been based in Fort Benning, Georgia since 1984. The SOA/WHINSEC has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers, including Argentine dictators Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola. Many of the school’s graduates have gone on to become participants in human rights violations and state terrorism in their respective countries.

?Buenos Aires city mayor Mauricio Macri ratified legislation allowing the new Metropolitan Police to carry taser guns. After pointing out that citizens insecurities are rising, Macri also said that the “cutting-edge technology used for dissuasion” will be carried in specific neighbourhoods, mainly the 12th District.

Metropolitan Police Chief Eugenio Burzaco said the new taser-armed police force will be hitting the streets of the capital in less than a week. And the controversial  X26 taser gun? “It’s not lethal,” Burzaco said.

Despite public apprehension, Burzaco says the tasers will be utilized in specific cases by certain personnel and any officers with a criminal record will be removed from the task force.

The Argentina Independent set out to see how the citizens of Buenos Aires feel about the use of tasers by the Metropolitan Police.

Daniel Alzugaray, 48, Artisan, Buenos Aires

I think they are just torture devices! A person has to be so close to use one, it seems wrong because chances are if you have any kind of weapon, you’re going to use it. This is something they used during the dictatorship and today it’s just another form of torture.  It’s like giving a monkey a knife – they have no regard for anything! It’s a barbaric concept here as well as in the US where they use those things. Using these is partly for effect, sure, but I still don’t agree with it.

Luciano Trinidad, 22, shop assistant, Buenos Aires

I think it’s ok. It’s a weapon that doesn’t kill. It stops what’s happening without someone having to die. It’s not as bad as a bullet so I think it might be a good change for police to have a taser. They use tasers in the US, right? It seems to work other places so I don’t see what’s so bad about it. I’m originally from Brazil, so I don’t know if the Argentines feel the same, but to me it seems like a better way of stopping a criminal than shooting them.

Vilma Teruncellito, 52, Feria de Cabildo Artisan, Buenos Aires

Horrible. It’s just another type of aggression. The people here remember the bad things that happened in Argentina. In the 70s tasers were just used as a way to hurt someone without killing them and who is to say that’s not how it is now? And after all, they are Macri’s police! I think it’s very bad. If the police want to demonstrate control this way, it means they still have the opportunity to hurt someone. How ugly.

Olga Navarro, 70, retired, Catamarca

I heard about this on the radio, but that they would actually do this? I am not in agreement with this at all. After the subversive groups of the 70s were punished, we felt that ‘Nunca Mas’ was going to work in this society. We think that type of thing won’t happen again, but is that really the case? They communicate with the public through the media, and nothing ever sounds serious that way. I think using tasers will be bad and remind people why they don’t like the police.

Photos by Brian Funk

Luis Lejano, 30, painter, Buenos Aires

I think it’s good. It’s logical, I mean, it’s better than a bullet, right? If there is a robber it’s better to catch them and bring them to justice than to kill them. For me it’s a good thing. I have a cousin who is a policeman and he’s had to shoot at people who were committing crimes before. I believe it’s better and puts him in less danger. If the other person has a gun they will want to use it because he has one, too. Maybe a taser is better.

Tension around the Buenos Aires’ spying scandal is growing as more people come forward with evidence that Mauricio Macri, the capital’s mayor, was in fact the man giving the orders to the now-imprisoned alleged spy, Gerado Ciro James.

James, a former member of the federal police, with close links to Macri, has been arrested for tapping various phone conversations, including some in the city’s ministry of education, Carlos Avila, a candidate for the River Plate football club’s administration, and also that of Sergio Burstein. Burstein is the head of association for victims of the 1994 AMIA bombing, an attack on the Jewish community that left 85 dead and 300 wounded.

In the case of Burstein’s phone, James would have operated under the Misiones police’s orders, who suspected Burstein in a murder case. Burstein had clashed with the city government over Macri’s plans to create a Metropolitan Police force, having spoken out against it and the planned force’s former head, Jorge Palacios. Macri is also convinced that the government is trying to affect his chances to get to the Casa Rosada in 2011.

In what many are claiming is a plan to dissolve the city government of all responsibility for James’ actions, Guillermo Montenegro, the justice minister in the city’s government, affirmed that a spying network “doesn’t exist and has never existed” in the city and said that James worked for the Education Ministry, who were oblivious to his side job at the Federal Police. Montenegro explained he only knew James was planning to enter the Metropolitan Police, a new police force exclusive to the capital. He continued saying “he never told us he worked in education and never told them he was in the federal police.”

Burstein gives another point of view in an interview with daily newspaper, claiming it to be impossible that Mariano Narodowski, the education minister, had no idea of James’ occupations, as he is claiming. According to Burstein, despite James being paid $6,000 a month, the minister has claimed he “could not name a task that had been assigned to James.”

Boca Connection

Meanwhile Montenegro has also denied James had worked in the Boca Junior Club security service during Macri’s presidency.

But the publication of a picture showing James in the Boca Juniors stadium wearing a police jacket and “controlling” Roberto Digón, ex-vice-president of football club made it tough for Macri to defend his theory.

At the time of the photograph, the mayor was president of the football club, and most of the politicians involved in the spying scandal were part of Boca’s administration. This includes Andrés Ibarra, current education undersecretary, and the minister of justice, Montenegro himself. Both politicians are still claiming not knowing anything about James existence, but the picture proves they had to be aware of his actions. They were later betrayed by Palacios, former head of the Metropolitan Police, when he told daily newspaper La Nación that he recommended James to Osvaldo Chamorro, his successor at the head of the institution.

Intelligence allegations

Meanwhile Néstor Valleca, the federal police chief, has acknowledged that James worked for the police in the Misiones region where he was an “intelligence assistant, which has nothing to do with what is seen on the street.”

However, Valleca also recognised James “should have been obliged to claim his other occupations and it should have been taken under account in his admission.” Argentina intelligence service (SIDE) is the only institution to be allowed to listen to phone lines. Vallecca defends the police saying “they don’t tape phone lines…In legal cases, the only accredited organism is SIDE.”

Vallecca’s allegations brought satisfaction into Macri’s party, PRO. The party leaders came up with the hypothesis of the existence of “a political operation” to prevent to launch of the Metropolitan Police.

Anibal Fernández, the nation’s cabinet chief, has blamed Macri for the whole story, saying “Macri is responsible for the Macri-Gate” comparing it with the Watergate scandal of 1974. “The scheme of the Metropolitan Police has been conceived like a parallel SIDE,” he added, accusing Macri and Palacios of starting a new police force with intelligence capacities. Fernández added that “an important person has not been mentioned in the story,” meaning Montenegro’s right arm, Matías Molinero, who is directly linked to the Metropolitan Police.