02/07/2026 03:38 - Judiciales
Almost nine years after the sinking of the ARA San Juan on November 15, 2017, the Federal Oral Tribunal of Santa Cruz prepares its verdict in a case that transcends the judicial realm. Judges Mario Reynaldi, Luis Alberto Giménez and Enrique Baronetto must resolve whether there are individual criminal responsibilities in the tragedy that claimed the lives of 44 crew members.
The challenge is enormous: the submarine, the main silent witness of the drama, remains at nearly 900 meters depth in the South Atlantic. Without access to the hull or the remains, the entire investigation was built on documents, testimonies and reconstructions of what happened before the implosion.
This evidentiary void is central: nobody knows for certain what happened during the approximately two hours between the submarine's last communication and the registered implosion. The crew did not manage to send new communications, did not activate the radio beacon nor execute emergency maneuvers.
Context for international readers: The ARA San Juan was a TR-1700 class submarine built in Germany, commissioned by the Argentine Navy in 1985. On November 15, 2017, it lost contact while surfacing from a patrol mission in the South Atlantic, approximately 432 kilometers off the coast of Argentine Patagonia.
For the plaintiff attorneys: the submarine should never have set sail. The tragedy was the consequence of a chain of wrong decisions, accumulated deterioration, ignored warnings and a maintenance structure that normalized risk. The strongest point appears in the July 2017 patrol, when the commander reported water intake in the forward battery section, a situation that was minimized.
For the defense: nearly ninety specialists and sailors testified under oath. Several former commanders agreed that the 33 technical issues and eight pending tests did not compromise nautical safety. Additionally, 72 hours before losing contact, the submarine successfully completed a warfare exercise with the Sea Fleet.
Claudio Javier Villamide, aged 62, is one of the four former high-ranking Navy officers accused. As former commander of the Submarine Force, the prosecution requested five years in prison for breach of public official duties and aggravated negligent damage causing death.
In an exclusive interview with Infobae from Río Gallegos (capital city of Santa Cruz Province in southern Patagonia), Villamide defended his management: "I am convinced that the vessel was in sailing condition." Regarding the pending technical issues, he explained that "none affected transcendent systems: propulsion, safety, firefighting elements, gas detection, main sensors, diesel engines or batteries."
Regarding the expired dry-docking maintenance, he cited the manufacturer itself: "a delay in its execution does not affect or compromise the submarine's safe navigation."
Villamide harshly criticized the Navy leadership: "Whoever was heading the Navy at that time [Admiral Marcelo Srur] lacked courage and leadership." He added that "a minority group of sycophants surrounding him, instead of seeking the truth and defending institutional interests, sought to protect him."
Villamide was dismissed in 2021 by a General War Council after 38 years of service. He lost the right to wear the uniform and receive his pension: "It's as if I had died," he described. His wife receives a pension of 75% of what he would have been entitled to.
During the pandemic, he lost his health insurance and felt he was "excluded, erased, banished" from an institution to which he dedicated nearly four decades.
Villamide described the rescue effort: "It was maximum and absolute." Navies from the United Kingdom, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Canada, France, Russia and the United States participated.
Regarding the mystery of the sinking, he reflected: "We will always have that doubt. If it was a hydrogen explosion, why didn't they detect the hydrogen?"
This is not the first time a democracy faces this dilemma. France lived with the mystery of the Minerve submarine for over half a century, disappeared in the Mediterranean in January 1968 with 52 crew members.
Only in 2019, thanks to technologies unavailable at the time, the hull was located at more than 2,300 meters depth. Ironically, the vessel that found it was the same Seabed Constructor of Ocean Infinity that in November 2018 enabled the discovery of the ARA San Juan.
"Even that finding did not completely clarify the causes of the sinking," recalls the analysis by Ámbito, citing the article by Edgardo Aguilera.
The trial also functions as a form of institutional reparation. But reparation does not necessarily mean conviction. Criminal law was not designed to satisfy the emotional need to identify those responsible, but to establish proven concrete guilt.
As Ámbito's analysis points out: "Politics manages broad responsibilities, Justice manages concrete guilt."
If the tribunal concludes that insurmountable doubts persist about the causal sequence of the sinking, it must assume the institutional cost of stating it, even if it frustrates part of society.
Alfredo S. Quiroga
