Two Argentine police officers have been arrested and 100 more suspended after two protesters were shot dead.

Police held for killing protesters

Press pictures implicate Argentine officers

Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
Saturday June 29, 2002
The Guardian

Two Argentine police officers have been arrested and 100 more suspended
after two protesters were shot dead during a wave of violent demonstrations
observers say threaten the survival of the caretaker administration of
President Eduardo Duhalde.

The action, in a country where crimes by the police often go unpunished,
was prompted by the publication yesterday of photographs in the Buenos
Aires press clearly showing police involvement in the incident.
The police had claimed that the shooting was the work of "infiltrators"
among the demonstrators.

"Those in charge of maintaining order are the ones who carried out this
atrocious manhunt," President Duhalde said yesterday after 14,000 people
marched on the presidential palace demanding his resignation and protesting
against the killing.

The shootings took place on Wednesday in the industrial Buenos Aires suburb
of Avellaneda, during the worst outbreak of violence Argentina has seen
since Mr Duhalde took office in January.

About 1,000 government demonstrators tried to cut off the main road into
Buenos Aires and about 90 people were injured, many of them fired on while
attempting to help others who had already been shot.

Protesters claimed that they were shot at indiscriminately by the police
from rooftops and an elevated pedestrian walkway.

The protest was aimed at IMF-imposed austerity measures which many blame
for a four-year-old recession that has plunged half of Argentina below the
poverty line, causing alarming increases in malnutrition and infant
mortality rates.
Following the country's default on its $141bn foreign debt in December, the
Argentine peso has fallen 75% against the dollar and inflation is
spiralling. In Buenos Aires, every day there are reports of children
fainting at school because they have gone for days without eating - in a
meat-exporting country that once prided itself as the "breadbasket of the
world".

One of the two officers arrested for Wednesday's killings is Chief
Inspector Alfredo Franchiotti, who was seen by witnesses inside Avellaneda
railway station firing at a 21-year-old demonstrator, Dario Santillan,
while Mr Santillan was trying to assist another man who had been shot just
a few minutes earlier.
The man Mr Santillan was helping, Maximiliano Costeki, was dragged by
fellow demonstrators into the station for cover. "Please help me, I'm
burning," said Costeki before dying. "The cops shot me."

While Mr Santillan was kneeling over Costeki, witnesses say, the chief
inspector burst in wielding an automatic rifle, heading a group of armed
policemen. "Don't shoot," begged Mr Santillan as he got up to run away,
only to be shot from behind by Mr Franchiotti, according to the witnesses.

They said Mr Santillan, bleeding copiously, was dragged outside the railway
station by Mr Franchiotti's men and that the officer hurled insults at him.
Fearful of a repetition of the social upheaval that last December toppled
the government of Fernando de la Rua and led to the quick-fire succession
of five presidents in two weeks, Mr Duhalde's government has warned that
there may be a plot to oust it.

There is "more than a suspicion" that the latest violence was not
spontaneous, said cabinet chief Alfredo Atanasof.

The violence erupted as the Argentine economy minister, Roberto Lavagna,
was leading desperate negotiations with the IMF in Washington for the
reestablishment of its $18bn credit line, suspended in December.

Argentina is hoping that the new austerity measures it has imposed at the
IMF's request will unlock badly needed loans that could be used to
decompress the country's difficult social and economic situation