Argentina's Menem cleared in arms-smuggling case

Former Argentine president Carlos Menem on Tuesday was cleared of charges that he orchestrated the smuggling of arms to Croatia and Ecuador in the 1990s, a court in Buenos Aires ruled.Menem, who was president from 1989 to 1999 and is now a senator, would have faced up to 12 years in prison if convicted of authorizing a shipment of 6,500 tonnes of weapons to Croatia and Ecuador via Panama and Venezuela. "Carlos Saul Menem has been acquitted," said a judge in the trial which began in October 2008. Seventeen other defendants -- including former ministers, retired military personnel and arms makers -- were also cleared, prompting disappointment from those who argued for convictions. "I have charged 18 people, and every one of them was let off," prosecutor Mariano Borinsky said. "But my team is going to keep working. We will appeal this ruling." Prosecutors had asked for an eight-year sentence for the 81-year-old Menem on the charges, which date back to three decrees the former Peronist president signed for shipments made in the early 1990s.Menem has admitted signing the decrees, but insists the transactions were legal because the weapons -- rifles, artillery, mortars, anti-tank rockets and ammunition -- were being sent to peaceful countries. Though Menem would have enjoyed immunity from imprisonment as a senator, he could have been incarcerated after his term ends in 2014, or if lawmakers strip him of his legal privilege. The weapons to Croatia were sent in seven shipments aboard freighters between 1991 and 1995. At the time much of the Balkans was under a UN arms embargo following the break up of the former Yugoslavia. The weapons sent to Ecuador arrived aboard three flights in February 1995.At the time, Ecuador was engaged in a border war with Peru, and Argentina was banned from selling weapons to either side because it was one of the guarantors of a peace agreement the two nations signed ending an earlier war in 1942.Menem spent five months under house arrest in 2001 on charges of masterminding the arms deals, but was set free by a Supreme Court ruling. The ex-leader, who is involved in several corruption cases in addition to the arms smuggling case from the time of his presidency, enjoys congressional immunity shielding him from any arrest as senator of his home province of La Rioja. A two-term president, Menem was once wildly popular, and his fondness for fast cars and tall women half his age amused rather than angered Argentines. But his popularity faded as corruption scandals emerged, his tough free-market policies alienated his electorate and the economy deteriorated. He also was president at the time Argentina was hit by its worst terror strikes, on local Jewish targets.In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was leveled in a bombing that killed 22 people and wounded 200.Two years later a car bombing at a building housing Jewish charities killed 85 people and injured 300 others in Buenos Aires. No one has been convicted.Menem's government was widely criticized for its handling of the subsequent investigations. Buenos Aires accuses Iran of having masterminded the 1994 attack and of using the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to execute it. A prosecutor at one point alleged that Menem, who was born in Argentina to Syrian immigrants, and his aides stole evidence to hide the involvement of a Syrian-Argentine businessman, and destroyed evidence incriminating him.