León Arslanián

León Carlos Arslanián, born on November 30, 1941, is an Argentine lawyer, jurist and public official. He was born in Buenos Aires to an Armenian Argentine tailor who had emigrated from Aintab in 1917, and he took his law degree at the University of Buenos Aires. Appointed to the National Criminal Court of Appeals in 1984, he sat on the panel of judges that heard the 1985 Trial of the Juntas and presided over its sentencing phase, which concluded on December 9. As national Minister of Justice from 1991 to 1992 he secured a reform of the penal code that required oral testimony in criminal trials and created a Court of Cassation. As provincial Minister of Justice and Security in Buenos Aires in 1998, and again as provincial Minister of Security from 2004 to 2007, he proposed gun control measures, stricter rules against police misconduct and the dismissal of thousands of officers over corruption, and he argued for crime prevention built on social policy. In 2010 he proposed a Crime Observation Office to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.