Argentine ex-navy commander convicted over 2017 sub disaster in which 44 sailors died

BUENOS AIRES - An Argentine court on July 8 convicted a senior former naval officer over the 2017 implosion of a submarine that left 44 sailors dead.

The wreck of the ARA San Juan was the Argentine navy’s deadliest disaster in peacetime.

Claudio Villamide, commander of the submarine force at the time of the tragedy, was given a three-year suspended sentence for aggravated negligence and breach of duties.

Three other former naval chiefs were acquitted.

The ARA San Juan went missing on Nov 15, 2017, a week after it set off from Ushuaia on Argentina’s southern tip for its home port at the Mar del Plata naval base.

Before vanishing it reported that seawater had entered the ventilation system, causing a battery on the vessel to short-circuit and start a fire.

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.

Prosecutors told the trial that the ship was in a poor state of repair and that its demise was “foreseeable.”

They argued that Villamide failed to take into account the submarine’s “deficient enlistment conditions” as well as a request for it to undergo safety inspections.

He denied any wrongdoing.

The wreck still lies on the seabed in the South Atlantic, 500km off Santa Cruz province, where the trial took place. AFP