Wife of Missing Submarine Crew Member Calls Vessel a Piece of Junk

By Jack Phillips
November 23, 2017 Last Updated: November 23, 2017
The Argentine military submarine ARA San Juan and crew are seen leaving the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina June 2, 2014. Picture taken on June 2, 2014. (Armada Argentina/Handout via REUTERS)

The wife of a crew member onboard the missing Argentine submarine and others slammed the quality of the vessel.

“They sent a piece of crap to sail,” Itati Leguizamon, wife of submarine crew member German Suarez, was quoted by media outlets saying

The submarine has been missing for more than a week. Officials said that an apparent explosion occurred about the same time the submarine went missing, according to the country’s Navy.

Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi maintained that the search for the missing submarine will continue. It disappeared hundreds of miles from Argentina’s east coast before contact was lost.

According to a Spanish media report, she said: “They didn’t tell [us] that they are dead … but what can you expect if they tell you that there was an explosion that caused them to fall below 3,000 meters (10,000 feet).”

“They lied to us … they have been dead for a while, and they had us here a week ago,” she said, adding that they “are angry” with the Navy’s alleged lack of transparency.

She also placed the blame of the submarine’s poor quality on “the previous government and of the current one.”

A member of the U.S. Navy, aboard the Boing P-8A Poseidon aircraft, looks down at the South Atlantic Ocean during the search for the ARA San Juan submarine missing at sea, Argentina Nov. 22, 2017. (REUTERS/Magali Cervantes)

Distraught family members could be seen crying after officials told them of the explosion. “According to this report, there was an explosion,” Balbi said. “We don’t know what caused an explosion of these characteristics at this site on this date.”

“They inaugurated a submarine with a coat of paint and a flag in 2014, but without any equipment inside,” Leguizamon added, Yahoo News reported. “The navy is to blame for its 15 years of abandonment.”

Captain Gabriel Galeazzi walks after speaking with journalists at Argentina's Navy base in Mar del Plata, on the Atlantic coast south of Buenos Aires, on November 19, 2017. (Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images)
Captain Gabriel Galeazzi walks after speaking with journalists at Argentina’s Navy base in Mar del Plata, on the Atlantic coast south of Buenos Aires, on November 19, 2017. (Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images)

The search for the submarine has prompted an international search-and-rescue mission.

“They haven’t come back and they will never come back,” said Jesica Gopar, the wife of submarine officer, Fernando Santilli. “I had a bad feeling about this and now it has been confirmed.”

People react as family and friends of the 44 crew members of the missing at sea ARA San Juan submarine gather at an Argentine naval base in Mar del Plata, Argentina Nov. 23, 2017. (REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci)

The German-built submarine was commissioned in 1985, but it got a $12 million retrofitting in 2014.

On Thursday, officials said a U.S. plane found an unidentified object in the water where it went missing.

 

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