The fall of General Belgrano remains controversial, especially in Argentina and the British left. However, the Argentine Navy and the captain of the Belgrano claimed that the sinking was legal. However, the focus on ending the Belgrano obscured the service rendered by the USS Phoenix in the Pacific during World War II. She was the last of the survivors of Pearl Harbor to be lost to enemy action, although it turned out that the “enemy” was the Royal Navy. Forty years after the start of the Falklands War, many think of the sinking of the Belgrano, one of the key events in the 1985 conflict, a senior official leaked documents to Dalyell showing that the Belgrano had not only been outside the already dubious legal exclusion zone, but had also moved away from it when it was bombed. General Belgrano`s captain, Héctor Bonzo, died on the 22nd. April 2009 at the age of 76. He had spent his last years working for an association called Amigos del Crucero General Belgrano (Friends of the cruiser General Belgrano), whose purpose was to help those affected by the sinking. [59] Captain Bonzo also wrote his memoirs on the shipwreck in the book 1093 Tripulantes del Crucero ARA General Belgrano, published in 1992. In this book, he writes that it is “inappropriate to accept that (…) The attack on hmS Conqueror was a betrayal. [60] During a 2003 interview, he stated that General Belgrano was only temporarily sailing west at the time of the attack and that his order was to attack all British ships within range of the cruiser`s armament. [61] This month marks the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the ship ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War. There is a debate about whether the sinking of the Belgrano is a war crime. As there were no cases before the British courts, the judges decided that the six months should run from the date of the sinking of the belgrano on 2 May 1982.
In other words, relatives were expected to take legal action in British courts while their country was still at war with Britain. There are many misconceptions about the purpose and legal status of the TEZ declaration. Areas of this type have been declared in the past mainly in favour of neutral vessels. It was not assumed that so many people had defined the boundaries of the conflict zone, but this is an example of the application of the rules of engagement. Under the law of armed conflict, an enemy warship can be attacked at any location. In 2003, the ship`s captain, Hector Bonzo, confirmed that General Belgrano had indeed maneuvered and not “sailed” away from the exclusion zone. [28] Captain Bonzo stated that any suggestion that hms Conqueror`s actions were a “betrayal” was completely false; On the contrary, the submarine performed its tasks according to the recognized rules of war. [29] In an interview two years before his death in 2009, he went on to explain, “This was absolutely not a war crime. It was an act of war, unfortunately legal. [30] This was one of the most bitter controversies of the Falklands War: the sinking of the aging Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, with the loss of 323 lives by a British submarine as it left the British maritime exclusion zone.
This was considered a war crime by some. Both actions were of dubious legality – the Convention on the Law of the Sea did not provide for such zones – but were nevertheless respected by the international community of neutral nations. The controversy over the fall stems not from whether it met the criteria of military necessity (which are discussed in this article), but from the accusation that it was a deliberate act aimed at derailing ongoing peace negotiations. This article will attempt to discuss all aspects of the fall and show that the fall was not a war crime from a legal point of view and that many legal arguments about the attack are unfounded. Claims that the attack was an attempt to derail peace negotiations are being investigated and, as Sir Lawrence Freedman has shown in the official history of the war, are false. Since the disappearance of the Belgrano, every effort has been made at the highest level to obscure the facts because they confirm that Thatcher`s conservative government deliberately provoked a war against Argentina. The reasons for the junta`s rejection of the Belaunde Plan were not based on the disappearance of the Belgrano. After the fall, the junta had sensed that world opinion was waning behind them, breaking British support in the EU, and they were then encouraged by the sinking of HMS Sheffield. The junta had the illusion that it would triumph militarily and diplomatically. Tam Dalyell tried the hardest to link the disappearance of the Belgrano to the failure of the Belaunde Plan.
Most of his comments were his claims of concealment, which cited discrepancies with the original statements at the time of the sinking from subsequent statements. The initial statements made at the time of the sinking were inaccurate as they were based on the first position reports of HMS Conqueror. As mentioned above, communication with Conqueror did not take place in real time, it was intermittent and it was only much later that these facts became known. The government was determined to lead the campaign and paid little attention to correcting its initial statements.