RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Former Dictators to Remain in Prison

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 10 1999 (IPS) - A court decision in Argentina has confirmed the prison sentences of former military commanders found guilty of stealing children during the nation’s most recent military dictatorship, and set a legal precedent by affirming that crimes against humanity are not subject to amnesty.

Estela Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an organisation of women whose grandchildren were ‘disappeared’ during the dictatorship, told IPS that the federal appeals court decision is “very positive” as a test case for the human rights issue.

After 20 years of gathering evidence, the Grandmothers were able to get legal authorities to put the former military leaders, as well as lower level officials, back in prison after their release by a presidential pardon in 1990. They had originally been sentenced for serious violations of human rights.

Carlotto believes the court decision has opened the door for other military personnel, who have not yet been charged, to face trial for human rights abuses.

The trial against the dictators – sentenced for the systematic disappearances of at least 10,000 people (and as many as 30,000, depending on the source cited) during the 1976-1983 dictatorship – did not include the crime of kidnapping minors, stealing their identities and falsifying documents, because at the time there was no evidence of the crime’s magnitude.

The country’s amnesty laws, which had guaranteed impunity for thousands of military officers and their subordinates, did not include a pardon for the crime committed against children, such that neither the amnesty laws nor the pardon stand in the way of pursuing trials for stealing children.

The defence had hoped the federal appeals court would find the crime was included among those for which the officials had previously been tried. But the court decided the crime had not been included and that it was not subject to the amnesty law, but was a crime of the magnitude of genocide.

The court also decided that the crime is ongoing as long as the missing children are not found.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo organised in 1977 to search for some 500 children who had been kidnapped along with their parents, or who were born in prison. Since then, 55 children have had their identity restored, and many of them now live with their grandparents.

The Grandmothers brought new charges against the former commanders who were pardoned in 1995, presenting evidence of the existence of clandestine maternity wards and listing numerous cases where children had been stolen by the forces who had kidnapped their parents.

The federal appeals court decision confirmed the prison sentences of former general Jorge Videla – who was detained in June 1988 – and of former admiral Emilio Massero, who was captured a few months later. Both are serving their sentences in their own homes because they are over age 70.

As a result of the court decision, trials could continue with charges against other military personnel, such as the case against former generals Leopoldo Galtieri and Guillermo Suárez Mason.

However, the court cancelled the trials of several military officials, but this does not imply their release from prison.

Federal judge Antonio Bagnasco would have to call them before the court again in order to broaden the inquiry because the appeals court decided the prison sentences were based on general rather than concrete cases.

Carlotto stated that the process initiated by Bagnasco in search of those responsible for the kidnapping of 194 children and subsequently stealing their identities is a cause which condemns a “systematic” crime, proven by the accumulation of cases.

The judge did not speak at length about particular cases but about the existence of clandestine maternity wards that operated in detention centres or in military hospitals. He also mentioned the testimonies of military doctors and nurses who acknowledged that the events had occurred.

The witness statements cited by Bagnasco said there had been a method by which the women imprisoned illegally by the regime had been kept alive until after they gave birth. Then the newborns were taken from their mothers.

Videla and Massera had been tried for similar causes by two other federal judges, and the charge had been a response to concrete cases involving chilren, most of who are alive and are now older than age 21.

The federal appeals court had also rejected the defence’s request that the officials be tried by a military court, because the Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Individuals prohibits moving the trials for such crimes to the military arena.