By Tito Drago
MADRID, Feb 16 1999 (IPS)

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon was provided with more evidence against Bolivian President Hugo Banzer and former dictators Jorge Videla of Argentina and Augusto Pinochet of Chile, the Permanent Human Rights Assembly of Bolivia (APDHB) reported Tuesday in Madrid.

At a news briefing, APDHB executive secretary Sergio Llorentty Soliz detailed the documents and testimony presented to Garzon last Thursday, according to which Banzer was a forerunner to Operation Condor during his 1971-78 de facto military regime.

Judge Garzon precipitated Pinochet’s arrest in London last October. The House of Lords – Britain’s highest court – is currently deciding whether the former Chilean dictator (1973-90) is to be extradited to Spain, where Garzon would try him on charges of terrorism, torture and crimes against humanity.

Banzer formally became part of Operation Condor – the coordinated repression of opponents of the dictatorships ruling the Southern Cone of the Americas in the 1970s – after the Sep 11, 1973 coup headed by Gen. Pinochet in Chile.

According to Llorenty Soliz, human rights are still violated in today’s Bolivia, governed by democratically-elected President Banzer.

The activist cited the murders of 13 peasant farmers last year, and bullet wounds suffered by another 102 at the hands of the police, “who continue using torture in a systematic manner.”

One of the documents handed over to Garzon, labelled “secret” and bearing Banzer’s signature and a March 1972 dateline, is a directive issued by the National Security Council to departmental and provincial security committees.

One of the objectives outlined in the document is the “annihilation of any foreign element whose participation in subversive activities has been proven,” and “any ‘Castrist’ [for Cuban President Fidel Castro] exile who returns to the country with subversive aims.”

Such activities, and others mentioned in the document, were under the command of “the Excelentisimo President of the Republic.”

Llorentty Soliz provided Garzon with testimonies on the kidnapping in Bolivia of Chileans and Argentinians, who were turned over to the de facto regimes ruling their countries at the time, and of Bolivians captured in Chile and Argentina.

Chilean national Julio Transito Valladares Caroca was arrested in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in 1976, and held in the ‘Panoptico Nacional’ in La Paz until August of that same year.

Journalist Antonio Peredo Leigue testified before the APDHB that Valladares Caroca was taken from the hospital early one morning and transferred to Chile. He was never heard of again.

Valladares Caroca was just one of the over 3,000 people who disappeared under the Pinochet regime.

After spending time in jail in his country, Bolivian physician Jorge Villavicencio took exile in Argentina. He was captured in 1979 in the northern province of Tucuman, and killed in the prison of Sierra Chica, in the province of Buenos Aires.

Llorentty Soliz provided Garzon with authenticated copies of Villavicencio’s death certificate and the document certifying that his family was given his personal effects at the prison.

Authorities during Argentina’s most recent de facto regime (1976-83) reported Villavicencio’s death as suicide. But testimony from other prisoners and the lack of a medical certificate and autopsy report convinced his family that he was killed.

In Argentina, where 10,000 to 30,000 people – depending on the source consulted – were tortured, killed and/or disappeared, 23 Bolivian nationals also disappeared, mainly students in the cities of La Plata, Salta, Tucuman and Buenos Aires.

One of the most well-known cases, also presented by Llorentty Soliz, was that of Graciela Rutilo Artes and her three-year-old daughter Carla, who were detained in Bolivia in 1974.

The two of them were taken to Argentina, where Graciela disappeared. There is testimony that she was killed in captivity. Her daughter was given in illegal adoption to an officer of the Argentinian army.

After several years of searching, Graciela’s mother, Matilde Artes, found and recuperated her granddaughter. The two women are living together in Madrid.

Llorentty Soliz said the APDHB backed the competence of the Spanish courts to try crimes against humanity committed in other countries, “because human rights do not recognise borders…nor should borders exist when it comes to trying those who violate them.”

Founded in 1976, the APDHB was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) prize in 1988, and the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Award in 1993.

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