Claiming another military coup by the "Carapintadas" was imminent against the new democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín (which at the time was leading a series of trials against members of the Argentine Military accused of human rights violations), Enrique Gorriarán Merlo led the 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment, during which the Argentine army used white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon, and in which the guerrillas used captured army conscripts as 'shields' and ended in the capture of the surviving MTP members. Alfonsín countered the claim that the MTP were trying to forestall a military coup and declared that the attack had the ultimate goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, that could have led to civil war. In their newspapers and in the Argentine press, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo denounced the way Alfonsín had handled the La Tablada incident, making a connection between what had happened to their disappeared children and the treatment endured by the MTP guerrillas. Gorriarán was given a life sentence along with other MTP comrades, but was freed by interim president Eduardo Duhalde two days before Néstor Kirchner's access to power in 2003. In protest to Duhalde's decision, former Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Guillermo Nani who took part in the fighting to recover the La Tablada barracks and lost an eye as a consequence, formally announced that he would be returning the medal for wounded military personnel that he won during the administration of Argentine president Raúl Alfonsín. The MTP still exist today as a political movement which has abandoned armed struggle.