HUMAN RIGHTS: Astiz to Remain in Argentina

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 15 2001 (IPS) - The Argentine government informed France and Italy Tuesday of its decision to reject their extradition requests for former Navy captain Alfredo Astiz, wanted for crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-83 military dictatorship.

Astiz was arrested in early July at the request of an Italian court that wants to try him for his alleged participation in the forced disappearance of three Italian citizens in 1976 and 1977.

After hearing of Astiz’s detention, authorities in France filed their own extradition request. In 1990, the former officer was tried ‘in absentia’ in France, and sentenced for the 1977 kidnapping in Argentina of French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet.

Spain and Sweden have also requested his extradition.

But the government of Fernando de la Rúa argued that the accused could only be tried in the country where the crimes were committed.

Last year, Buenos Aires responded in a similar manner to Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who has sought the extradition of nearly 100 former repressors – including Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – to try them for crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorships in Chile (1973-90) and Argentina.

The Italian courts would like to try Astiz in connection with the disappearance of Angela Aieta, Susana Pegoraro, who was pregnant at the time, and her father Juan Pegoraro.

The Argentine courts, meanwhile, are investigating a claim by a local human rights group that Evelyn Vázquez, who was raised by a former non-commissioned Navy officer currently under prosecution, was Pegoraro’s daughter.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the organisation that filed the claim, is made up of women seeking their grandchildren who disappeared during the dictatorship, which they say had a systematic plan for the kidnapping and illegal adoption of the young children of political prisoners.

Vázquez has refused to undergo the blood test that would confirm or rule out her possible relationship to Pegoraro, because she wants the courts to guarantee that the results of the exams would not be used as evidence against her adoptive father.

If it is confirmed that Vázquez is Susana Pegoraro’s daughter, Astiz could be tried for the crime of kidnapping minors.

Astiz was prosecuted in the mid-80s in Argentina on charges of kidnapping, torture and forced disappearance. But in 1987 he benefited by amnesty laws that led to the dismissal of hundreds of cases against members of the military implicated in the brutal repression of real or suspected opponents of the regime.

Human rights groups estimate that around 30,000 people were “disappeared” by security forces during the years of military rule.

There is an international arrest warrant out on Astiz – known as “the Blond Angel” and one of the most notorious symbols of the dictatorship’s brutality – based on the sentence handed down by the French court in 1990.

Although he has been able to avoid the courts so far in Argentina, he has not been able to escape the condemnation of society, and has been the target of aggression on several occasions when he was recognised in discotheques, restaurants, or simply walking down the street.

In an early 1998 interview with the weekly Argentine publication Trespuntos, Astiz expressed no remorse for the disappearance of citizens, and admitted that he had participated in operations by units of the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA). He also blamed the Navy for converting him into a killer.

His statements led to 14 lawsuits for “apology for crime”, and to 60 days of military arrest. He was stripped of his rank and expelled from the Navy, which meant the loss of his salary and all other benefits of belonging to the armed forces.