RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Scilingo’s Retraction Doesn’t Change Facts

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 5 1999 (IPS) - The apparent retraction of his words by the former Argentinian captain who horrified the world with his detailed accounts of the “flights of death,” in which detainees were tossed live into the sea from planes, does not change the facts, said human rights activists Friday.

Former navy officer Adolfo Scilingo testified before Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón that he lied when he told Argentinian journalist Horacio Verbitsky in 1995 that during the 1976-83 de facto military regime, political prisoners were thrown alive into the Rio de la Plata estuary from military air planes.

Verbitsky said Friday that Scilingo’s detailed confession, transcribed by the journalist in the book “The Flight”, only confirmed something that was already known, and that it’s main contribution was the “subjective dimension” of the events, as narrated by one of the killers.

Alba Lanciloto, with the human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, told IPS that the former captain’s original testimony caused them “great pain” – not because they did not know about the flights, but because “Argentinians seemed to believe what occurred only when it was confirmed by a murderer.”

During the years in which the military ruled Argentina, at least 10,000 people were abducted and “disappeared”, although rights organisations put that figure at 30,000. That number includes around 500 children abducted with their parents or born into captivity, then appropriated and illegally adopted.

While the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organised to demand the appearance of and the truth about their missing sons and daughters, the Grandmothers emerged within the framework of the search for their grandchildren.

Many of the abducted minors are still living under their changed identities as the children of the military officers or others who “adopted” them, while several former military commanders have recently been prosecuted on charges of appropriation of minors.

Since the late 1970s, the Mothers, Grandmothers and other rights groups that emerged in the heat of the dictatorship were told of the “flights of death” by survivors of the repression, but the identities of the victims were never discovered.

Testimony of the flights was registered in a document titled “Never Again”, drawn up after the return to democracy by a group of writers, reporters and human rights activists after hearing the stories of hundreds of survivors.

Scilingo was the only military officer who decided to confess, and he not only talked to reporters, but went so far as to write a book – which he now says he only signed due to financial need.

Furthermore, he travelled to Spain to testify before Garzón – the judge who has become famous for his attempt to get former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet extradited to Spain – and submitted a heap of documents.

The documents, covered by Verbitsky in his book, include petitions submitted by the former captain to his superiors in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as letters sent this decade to former dictators Jorge Videla and Eduardo Massera, which back up what is already known about the characteristics of the repression.

But after nearly two years in custody in Spain, Scilingo said the whole thing was part of a conspiracy, and that he lied “out of respect for the victims” and in an attempt to hurt former admiral Massera.

Scilingo’s about-face does not mean the case will fall apart, however. The charges against the former Argentinian officers are based on a broad array of documentary evidence and survivor testimony. Verbitsky himself said he expected Garzón to summon him to testify.

Besides his bid to secure the extradition of Pinochet, Garzón is preparing the groundwork for the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the disappearance of some 600 Spanish nationals and descendants of Spanish citizens in Argentina.

This week, he issued arrest warrants for 98 former members of the Argentinian military, who he wants to try on charges of genocide, torture and forced disappearance.

The heads of the Argentinian military dictatorship were convicted and imprisoned here in the mid-1980s, but were later pardoned by President Carlos Menem, during his first term (1989- 95).

Thousands of lower-ranking members of the military also implicated in human rights violations had already been let off the hook by laws passed during the government of Raúl Alfonsin (1983- 89).

One of Scilingo’s lawyers, Liliana Magrini, said Friday that her former client, who she herself advised to testify before Garzón, was “a great story-teller,” and questioned his mental health.

Lanciloto, meanwhile, who lost her two sisters, two brothers-in- law and a nephew during the de facto regime, said Scilingo’s retraction should be classified as a new crime, “ongoing psychological torture,” due to the pain it causes the families of the disappeared.