A former Argentine naval officer sought to be acquitted over a deadly submarine implosion in 2017, with his lawyer arguing Thursday that there was insufficient evidence against him.
The implosion of the ARA San Juan killed 44 people, making it the Argentine navy’s deadliest disaster in peacetime.
Prosecutors on Monday urged a five-year prison sentence for Claudio Villamide, commander of the submarine force at the time of the tragedy.
Villamide and three other former senior officers are on trial for dereliction of duty and aggravated negligent destruction.
“We have no conclusive evidence that there was a breach of duty,” Villamide’s lawyer, Juan Pablo Vigliero, told the court in the southern city of Rio Gallegos, calling for his client’s acquittal.
The ARA San Juan went missing a week after it set off from Ushuaia on Argentina’s southern tip and was returning to its home port at the Mar del Plata naval base.
Prosecutors said that Villaide failed to take into account the submarine’s “deficient enlistment conditions” and a request for it to be taken to dry dock for safety inspections, a statement read, but the officer denies the allegations.
They also sought sentences of between three and a half and five years for the other officers.
The court is expected to deliver a verdict in August.
The tragedy of the San Juan remains a collective trauma in Argentina.
More than a dozen countries took part in the weeks-long search for the vessel, which was eventually located a year later by a private British marine robotics firm, its hull dented and deformed.
The vessel’s crushed wreckage still lies on the seabed in the South Atlantic, 500 kilometers (310 miles) off Santa Cruz province, where the trial is taking place.
