ARGENTINA-HUMAN RIGHTS: Astiz Accosted by his Victims

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 7 1997 (IPS) - Less than a week after being spit in the face by a woman who recognised him in a discotheque, Argentine Navy Captain Alfredo Astiz, a symbol of the repression of the 1976- 83 dictatorship, was accosted in the street Thursday by one of his victims.

On his way to work in Buenos Aires, Jorge Ocampo, a leader of the governing Justice party, recognised the man who had beaten his wife and four-year-old daughter. In spite of Astiz’ efforts to slip away unnoticed, Ocampo followed him, shouting insults and threatening to hit him. “Why don’t you hit me? I’m not tied up, coward,” Ocampo shouted.

Speaking to the press, a visibly shaken Ocampo recalled the day of the Mar. 24, 1976 military coup, when Astiz broke into his home, tied his wife to a chair and brutally beat her, demanding to know her husband’s whereabouts. When their young daughter ran to hug her mother, Astiz grabbed her by her hair and threw her across the room.

A few months after the incident, Ocampo fled with his family to exile in Sweden. His five children still live there – as does the family of Dagmar Hagelin, a young Swedish woman shot to death by Astiz, who reportedly confused her with someone else.

The latest military dictatorship in Argentina was responsible for the torture, ‘disappearance’ and death of some 11,000 people, according to official figures (human rights groups put the number at 30,000). Although the heads of the military regime were sentenced in 1985, they were pardoned in 1990.

But the only member of the military attacked by a victim since the pardon has been Astiz.

A doctor who worked during the dictatorship in clandestine detention centres, Jorge Bergez, was shot by unknown individuals, but organisations grouping families of ‘disappeared’ victims of the repression condemned the act of violence.

Sentenced in France to life in prison for the murders of French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, Astiz faces arrest by Interpol (International Police) if he leaves the country.

French President Jacques Chirac called him a “murderer,” and recommended that the government of Carlos Menem prevent his promotion up the military ladder if it wanted to avoid diplomatic problems with France.

In Argentina, Astiz was never sentenced thanks to the laws of “due obedience” and “punto final” (final stop), which were passed just when his role in a number of cases of torture and other human rights violations was proven.

But over the past two years, he has been repeatedly accosted and insulted, and even physically attacked by people who recognise him in the street.

He was punched while on vacation in Bariloche, a ski resort city in the southern Andes, in September 1995. A month later, his windshield was broken by a young man who recognised him driving his car. People often get up and leave after insulting him in bakeries, discotheques and restaurants.

Last Sunday, a woman recognised him dancing in a discotheque in Gualeguay, a town in the eastern province of Entre Rios. After making sure it was him, she spit in his face and shouted “murderer, torturer, son of a bitch, get out of here!”

But Thursday, Astiz ran into one of his victims. “When I saw him, I couldn’t contain my pain and my indignation,” said Ocampo, “and I did what all Argentineans should do with them – not let them live in peace, make them feel exiled in their own country.”

My children are far away because I had to live in exile, “while I see him walking about free and unpunished in Buenos Aires,” he added.

Astiz became a symbol of the repression not only due to the crimes he committed – which continue to be the focus of legal action in other countries, France, Sweden and now Spain – but also as a result of his military performance in South Georgia island off the southern tip of Argentina in 1982.

When the military regime sent troops to the Malvinas/Falkland islands to try to recover them from Great Britain, Astiz led an invasion of the nearby South Georgia island – a Falkland Islands Dependency. He soon surrendered, and images of him as a prisoner circled the world. When Ocampo’s wife saw him on TV in Sweden, she screamed in horror, recognising him as the man who had beaten her and her daughter.