Argentineans flabbergasted as inmates given furloughs to take part in Peronist rallies

The images of a rock drummer - accused of burning his wife alive - playing during a concert outside a jail below a giant photograph of Néstor Kirchner has ignited a fierce debate between the late president's wife and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and the opposition over her decision to allow inmates to take part in Peronist Party activities.

The drummer, Eduardo Vásquez, a member of the band formed by other prisoners called River Plate, is serving a long sentence for murder. The band members have been released on other occasions to play at cultural activities sponsored by the Peronist wing of staunch Kirchner supporters. The inmates, also "Kirchnerists," form a larger group of pro-government prisoners inside the Argentinean penal system known as Vatayón Militante , loosely translated as the Militant Battalion.

Clarín , Argentina's leading daily, whose publishers have been engaged in an ongoing political battle with the Kirchner administration, denounced in its July 29 edition that the inmates are being released from their cells to take part in political rallies. Opposition lawmakers have questioned the cultural value of Vatayón Militante and complained that recently sentenced inmates are being giving furlough privileges.

After Clarín first reported the inmates' activities, Fernández de Kirchner explained publicly the following day that Vatayón Militante was one of 20 NGOs which, along with labor and religious groups, are working to "reintegrate convicted Argentineans back into society."

Clarín published photographs and videos taken at two activities in which Vásquez and other inmates participated. Vásquez had been the drummer for the group Callejeros, the same band that was performing at Buenos Aires' Cromañón disco the night a fire broke out in 2004, which killed 194 people.

Since 2010, Vásquez has been held for the alleged murder of his wife Wanda Taddei. While he was still in preventive custody in 2011, he was photographed playing at a Vatayón activity some 35 kilometers from the penitentiary.

Jorge Taddei, Wanda's father, said that he was in favor of helping prisoners reintegrate into society but criticized the way prisoners are being let out before they are sentenced.

It is up to judges in Argentina to determine when and if a certain inmate should be given furlough privileges, decisions that are made with the help of pre-trial services reports. But as Clarín , and another newspaper, Página/12 , reported, these rulings are often embellished in exchange for bribes.

The judges that agreed to approve Vásquez's permits acknowledged giving him the privilege to take part in cultural activities but under condition he conducted himself as a prisoner.

Nevertheless, Argentinean Supreme Court Justice Eugenio Zaffaroni, known for his friendship with members of Fernández de Kirchner's government, clarified in a radio interview that such furloughs are granted to prisoners who have completed half their sentences. This has not been the case with Vásquez. In June, he was sentenced to serve 18 years.