RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Police Death Squads Kill Minors, Says Court

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 27 2001 (IPS) - Death squads made up of police officers in Argentina kill suspected juvenile delinquents and minors who have reported police brutality, according to human rights groups, politicians and the judiciary.

The use of the term “death squad”, in a reference to 60 killings of minors in supposed confrontations with police, by a decree issued Thursday by the Supreme Court of the central province of Buenos Aires, drew even greater attention to the phenomenon.

Argentina’s security forces committed grave human rights violations during the 1976-83 military dictatorship, when 10,000 to 30,000 people became victims of forced disappearance. According to human rights groups, many police officers use the same torture techniques when interrogating criminal suspects today that they employed with political dissidents in the past.

The main targets of police abuse are teenage boys and young men, especially youngsters from families of modest means. Half of the impoverished minors in this country of 37 million have dropped out of school, and one out of three neither work nor study, according to official statistics.

Cases of minors who were apparently the victims of extrajudicial executions appear occasionally in the police pages. In April, for example, the body of a 14-year-old boy with 11 bullet wounds showed up in Buenos Aires province alongside the body of a 16-year-old who had been shot in the back six times and had a plastic bag tied around his head.

The boys’ family reported that the teenagers, both of whom had criminal records for robbery, had been threatened by the police. Lawyer Carlos Bigalli, who defends minors, said that if evidence of the involvement of five police officers arrested in connection with the murders were found, the existence of a death squad would be confirmed.

Up to now, denunciations of alleged extrajudicial killings by police have been isolated. But the decree issued by the Buenos Aires province Supreme Court gives the question new weight.

In fact, the minister of Security for Buenos Aires province, Ramón Verón, resigned Friday after the incidents committed in his district came to light.

Besides bullet wounds, a number of the 60 victims showed marks on their hands and faces indicating that they had tried in vain to protect themselves from police gunfire, a member of the Supreme Court who asked to remain anonymous told the Buenos Aires daily Pagina 12.

Suspicions of police involvement in the killings were awakened because many of the victims of “shoot-outs” with police had previously filed reports on police brutality.

The Supreme Court decree, which suggests that crime scenes were modified to simulate shoot-outs, was accompanied by testimony gathered in 1999 and 2000, describing more than 1,000 human rights violations against minors in police custody.

The reports mention cases of boys and teenagers forced to do kneebends as they stood naked with their hands behind their heads, brutal beatings of youngsters, or mysterious suicides in jail cells that should have been guarded to protect the minors.

For years, human rights organisations have investigated cases in which unarmed civilians were killed in apparent confrontations with the police. Half of the cases have been reported in the province of Buenos Aires, the country’s most populous district.

Buenos Aires Governor Carlos Ruckauf provoked an outcry during the 1999 election campaign when he told the police to “shoot the criminals,” in a controversial attempt to show voters that he would be tough on crime.

On Friday, after the Supreme Court released its decree, Ruckauf asked minister of Security Verón to resign.

Shortly before handing in his resignation, Verón complained that “Reporting abuses is a sport for minors.” He also spoke out in defence of police officers who are killed in shoot-outs.

Police abuse is only made possible by a hard-line stance on crime by the government, which refers to “citizen safety”, shorthand for the “elimination” of delinquents, particularly youngsters, María del Carmen Verdú, a lawyer for the Commission against Police Repression, told IPS.

“We have long suspected that there are death squads, because we had evidence of many cases in which youngsters who reported to us that they had been threatened were later shot and killed in supposed street clashes,” said Verdú.

If it is verified that there were 60 cases of extrajudicial executions of youngsters by police, we could speak of a death squad in the province of Buenos Aires, said Irma Lima, with the Minors Council of Buenos Aires province, referring to the Supreme Court decree.

But the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a human rights group created during Argentina’s last de facto military regime, criticised the Minor’s Council, stating in a report that “The active policy of victimisation of minors is complemented by a not so active policy by the provincial Council.”

“It is quite likely that we’re looking at death squads, and that they have links to the public security policies that tolerate them,” said Gustavo Palmieri, director of the centre’s programme of institutional violence and citizen safety.