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Ex-commander convicted over submarine implosion that killed 44

▶ Watch Video: Argentina may have received signals from missing sub

An Argentine court convicted a senior former naval officer on Wednesday over the 2017 implosion of a submarine in the South Atlantic in which all 44 crew members died.

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.

The federal court in the southern province of Santa Cruz also barred him from holding public office for six years.

Three other former naval chiefs were acquitted.

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Former Navy commander Claudio Javier Villamide, former chief of the Submarine Force Command, arrives alongside his lawyer Magali Crespos for the sentencing hearing in the trial over the 2017 sinking of the ARA San Juan submarine in Rio Gallegos, Santa Cruz province, Argentina, on July 8, 2026. 

Walter Diaz /AFP via Getty Images

The 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 Mar del Plata naval base.

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

It sank and then imploded.

More than a dozen countries took part in a weekslong search for the vessel, but it was eventually located a year later by a British marine robotics firm at a depth of around 3,000 feet, its hull dented and deformed. At the time, the Argentine navy released an image of the wreckage, showing “the habitable section containing the batteries and all the submarine’s systems and equipment.”

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A tweet from the Argentine Navy shows, at right, the torpedo tubes from the front of the ARA San Juan submarine, discovered almost 3,000 feet deep on the Atlantic seafloor by Ocean Infinity, and at left a diagram showing where the tubes would have been locted on the intact sub.

Navy of Argentina

The discovery was announced just two days after families of the missing sailors held a commemoration one year after the sub disappeared.

“These were 44 preventable deaths”  

The disaster, which inspired a 2024 Netflix documentary, traumatized Argentines and led to questions about whether the navy had fulfilled its duty of care toward the 43 men and one woman aboard.

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

An attorney representing most of the victims’ families rejected the ruling as “insufficient” and announced plans to appeal.

“The families will appeal the acquittals and demand harsher sentences,” Valeria Carreras told AFP.

She nonetheless hailed the case as a “huge step” toward achieving accountability for the sailors’ deaths and expressed satisfaction the court had returned a guilty finding against Villamide.

“These were 44 preventable deaths, and it sends a message to the Armed Forces and the State to protect those who serve the nation,” she said.

Victoria Morales, whose 31-year-old son Esteban Garcia died in the implosion, said those responsible have been “left unpunished.”

“Once again they stab us, they trample on his name, they leave us in a bad way, they left us without a member of our family. … How could I be satisfied?” Morales told AFP from the northern province of Tucuman.

Prosecutors argued 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 and insisted the vessel was seaworthy.

The wreck still lies on the seabed, 310 miles off the coast of Santa Cruz province. Hours after announcing the sub’s discovery, the Argentine government said it was unable to recover the vessel, drawing anger from missing sailors’ relatives.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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