By Tito Drago
MADRID, Apr 14 1999 (IPS)

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has shot to world reknown in his bid to extradite and try former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, heard new testimony this week that could contribute to the eventual extradition of other former de facto South American military leaders to Spain.

The Argentine rights group Abuelas (Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo testified in Madrid Tuesday in connection with four cases of children who were abducted and illegally adopted.

The cases grant further credence to the existence of ‘Operation Condor’ – a network of coordinated repression of opposition by the dictatorships ruling the Southern Cone region in the 1970s and 1980s.

And on Wednesday, Martin Almada, a Paraguayan jurist and victim of the 1954-89 dictatorship in his country, testified before Judge Garzon, and provided him with several legally-certified documents which also substantiate the existence of Operation Condor.

Almada and Spanish lawyer Carlos Slepoy told a news briefing in Madrid that they had submitted to Garzon a document that reinforced the argument for the legality of the extradition of former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, former Argentine de facto military leader Jorge Videla, Pinochet and their accomplices.

Retired general Pinochet, 83, under house arrest in London since last October, is awaiting the decision to be handed down Thursday by British Home Secretary Jack Straw on whether he is to stand extradition trial on charges of torture.

Slepoy stressed that even if the former de facto military leaders were tried in their own countries and convicted on charges of kidnapping and murder, extradition requests could still be submitted by Spain, where they could stand trial “for crimes against humanity and murder.”

Garzon, according to reliable sources from the high court to which his court belongs, plans to issue a search and capture warrant for the current governor of the northwestern Argentine province of Tucuman, Antonio Domingo Bussi, in the next few days.

He is also expected to issue arrest warrants for around 50 former military chiefs, including General Luciano Benjamin Menendez.

The request for Stroessner’s extradition will likely be sent later, perhaps to coincide with the end of the political asylum conceded by Brazil, which expires in August.

In any case, Slepoy underlined, “political asylum cannot provide protection for the commission of common crimes and crimes against humanity.”

One of the documents that Almada handed over to Garzon is an authenticated photocopy of a report sent by Paraguayan police commissioner director of political affairs, Alberto Cantero, to chief of investigations Pastor Coronel.

In the report, Cantero indicated that from Apr 5-7, 1977, a working group comprised of Paraguayan, Argentine and Uruguayan military officers was set up. The report details their names and ranks.

The report also says the group “thoroughly” interrogated a number of detainees, and that “the redeeming information” emerged from the interrogation of Uruguayan citizen Gustavo Edison Insaurralde Meliar.

According to the report, Insaurralde Meliar was active in the “ideological and doctrinaire group of the Party for the Victory of the People” (PVP) in Uruguay, and may indeed have been “the top subversive leader” of that party.

Two of the party’s leaders, Gerardo Gatti and Leon Duarte, were abducted in Buenos Aires in 1976.

Another document submitted to Garzon was “search warrant no. 23/76”, sent from Asuncion to “Condor 1 – SIE (Arg) – Agremil (P y A)”.

In other words: Operation Condor 1 in Santiago de Chile, the Information Service of the Argentine army (Servicio de Informaciones del Ejercito – SIE) and the military attaches (agregados militares – Agremil) of Peru and Argentina (P y A).

The search referred to a guerrilla camp “under one Neneco Silvera, who was arrested in Formosa, Argentina.” The search was carried out by a motorised Argentine military detachment under First Lieutenant Carlos Roberto Contreras.

A third document, from the commander-in-chief of the Paraguayan armed forces, confirms that a bilateral conference of Paraguayan and Brazilian army intelligence services was held May 3-7, 1976 to discuss “internal subversive activities and their connection with foreign parts.”

Two other documents prove that Paraguay handed over Chilean national Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcon to his country. One report states that on Jun. 6, 1975, the police commissioner director of political affairs “entrusted” several detainees to the commander of the security guard.

The second document states that the German government officially agreed to take in “the extremists Amilcar Latino Santucho and Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcon,” due to pressure – it adds – by (rights watchdog) Amnesty International and the (Geneva- based) International Commission of Jurists.

Santucho, an Argentine national, was released and granted exile in Germany. But Fuentes Alarcon was turned over to the 1973-90 Pinochet dictatorship. Witnesses testified that they had seen him in the Villa Grimaldi detention camp in Chile. Since then he has become just one more name on the long list of “disappeared.”

Almada said the incident demonstrated that “Pinochet exercised greater influence over Stroessner than did Germany, but (Argentina’s) Videla did not.”

The Paraguayan jurist asked Garzon to demand that Interpol (International Police) provide records on actions it undertook at the behest of Southern Cone governments during that period, and that the United Nations provide documents on the cases brought before its agencies by families of victims and survivors.

Alcira Rios Ponce de Leon, with Argentina’s Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, testified before Garzon that she had recognised, on the exhumed corpse of “disappeared” Argentine national Laura Carlotto, a bra she had lent her at the “La Cacha” concentration camp in the city of La Plata, in Buenos Aires province.

The two women had been abducted by Argentine security forces, and were being held in “La Cacha”.

On Aug 23, 1978, Carlotto was taken from the camp by her captors. A few days later her body appeared in the streets of the city, and police claimed that she had been shot while resisting arrest.

Carlotto was pregnant at the time of her detention, and gave birth to her son Guido in “La Cacha”. When he was taken away, she was told he would be turned over to his grandparents. But the boy – who would today be an adult – remains missing.

Rios Ponce de Leon and her husband, Luis Cordoba, gave Garzon records on four children who were abducted in one country, and after being turned over to authorities in another went missing, but were eventually found and recuperated by their grandparents – further evidence of the cooperation between the de facto regimes.

Ponce de Leon said that while Videla and several of his associates were currently facing charges in Argentina in connection with the illegal “appropriation” of children of “disappeared” victims, that did not preclude their eventual extradition to Spain on charges of genocide.

Excerpt: