Relatives of the 323 Argentine sailors who died when the HMS Belgrano battleship was sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands war are poised to sue Britain for damages, a lawyer for the families said yesterday.
Two Buenos Aires lawyers will present a case on Tuesday to the International Human Rights Court in Strasbourg over the demise of the Belgrano. The sinking marked a turning point in the 10-week conflict and represented the single largest loss of life amid the nearly 1,000 deaths in the war.
The relatives' lawyers argue that the battleship's sinking outside the theatre of operations violated wartime conventions set down in The Hague in 1907. They say the attack's "sole purpose was to frustrate peace negotiations carried forth by then Peruvian President Mr Belaunde Terry".
"The sinking of this ship was outside of the 200-mile exclusion zone" established by the British around the archipelago, said a lawyer, Mr Jorge Antonio Olivera. "We are seeking indemnity for all the deaths."
The Belgrano was torpedoed on May 2nd, 1982, by the British submarine HMS Conqueror as Argentina pushed its claim of sovereignty over the islands it calls the Malvinas. The 1,093 men on board went into the water 36 nautical miles outside of the 200-mile exclusion zone.
The former Argentine president, Mr Carlos Menem, later questioned whether the then British prime minister, Ms Margaret Thatcher, should be extradited for the Belgrano "war crime".
"At no time did the Argentine cruiser enter the exclusion zone. On the contrary, in the early morning hours it had set a course for the Isla de los Estados, clearly opposite of steering toward the theatre of operations," the lawyers wrote in their case notes.
Argentina did not bring any suit against the British after the Falklands campaign "because of political interests", Mr Olivera said. In 1994 the Argentine Defence Ministry went so far as to release a report calling the Belgrano's fate "a legal act of war".