A federal court in Río Gallegos convicted former Argentine submarine-force commander Claudio Villamide of aggravated negligence and breach of official duties over the 2017 loss of the ARA San Juan. The submarine's implosion killed all 44 sailors aboard in the Argentine Navy's deadliest peacetime disaster.
The three judges unanimously imposed a three-year suspended prison sentence and barred Villamide from public office for six years. The court cleared three other former naval officers: Héctor Aníbal Alonso, Hugo Correa and Luis Enrique López Mazzeo. The judgment followed more than four months of proceedings and 30 hearings.
Lawyers representing families of the crew welcomed the conviction while signalling that the case was not over. Valeria Carreras called the ruling an important measure of accountability and said it showed the deaths were preventable. In a joint statement, Carreras and Lorena Arias described it as the first Argentine criminal conviction of a naval commander over the deaths of personnel under his command in peacetime. They said they planned to challenge both the acquittals and what they considered a lenient sentence after the court published its full reasoning on August 21.
The ARA San Juan disappeared on November 15, 2017, while returning from Ushuaia to its home base at Mar del Plata. Before its final communication, the crew reported seawater entering the ventilation system, short-circuiting a battery bank and starting a fire. Monitoring stations later detected a strong acoustic event that investigators attributed to an implosion as the submarine descended without control.
An international search involving more than a dozen countries continued for weeks, but the wreck was not found until a year later. British marine-robotics company Ocean Infinity located the crushed hull on the South Atlantic seabed at a depth of about 907 metres, roughly 500 kilometres off Santa Cruz province. The wreck remains there.
At trial, prosecutors argued that the vessel's poor repair condition made the loss foreseeable. They said Villamide failed to account for deficient readiness and recommendations for additional safety inspections. The submarine also had a 100-metre diving restriction because tests following a mid-life refit were still outstanding. Villamide denied wrongdoing and maintained that the vessel was fit to sail.
The conviction did not resolve every allegation raised by the families, as the promised appeal makes clear. It did, however, assign criminal responsibility to the officer who led the submarine force while leaving three other commanders cleared. The court's forthcoming reasons were expected to set out how it connected Villamide's decisions and omissions to the chain of failures preceding the implosion.
