By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 12 2002 (IPS)

A court in Argentina indicted former dictator Leopoldo Galtieri and 20 other retired military officers Thursday for their participation in the abduction, torture and homicide of 18 members of the now-defunct Montoneros guerrilla movement.

Federal Judge Claudio Bonadío considered there was enough evidence to continue the legal proceedings against the former officers, who were already in preventive detention for their alleged involvement in human rights violations committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

Two months ago, Bonadío issued arrest warrants for Galtieri, who governed this Southern Cone nation as a de facto ruler in 1981 and 1982, and a number of other members of the security forces, including former army chief Cristino Nicolaides and retired generals Guillermo Suárez Mason and Santiago Riveros, who were involved in the “dirty war” against opponents of the regime.

In addition, the judge ordered the seizure of assets belonging to the accused, for the equivalent – in Argentine pesos – of between 110,000 and one million dollars, depending on each case.

The officers in question were in charge of an army intelligence operation that captured a group of Montoneros guerrilla fighters who returned from exile in 1980 in an insurgent operation known as the “counteroffensive.”

Among the 18 Montoneros leaders who were tortured and killed was Lorenzo Viñas, the son of writer David Viñas. He was abducted in Brazil and transferred to a clandestine torture camp in Battalion 601, in the central province of Buenos Aires.

Claudia Alegrini, Lorenzo Viñas’ widow, filed a lawsuit in the mid-1990s on the basis of evidence – documents and the testimony of survivors – that she was able to gather on the cases of the 18 Montoneros.

Essential information was provided by Silvia Tolchinsky, the only survivor of the captured group of guerrillas.

In 1994, Tolchinsky told Alegrini what she had witnessed and experienced during the months she was detained along with Viñas, and confirmed that he had been killed.

Tolchinsky is now married to Claudio Escagluzzi, who was working as an army intelligence officer and torturer in Battalion 601 at the time of the kidnappings. Escagluzzi is currently in prison in Spain in connection with another pending human rights case.

Among the Montoneros who were killed were Julio Genoud, Horacio Campiglia, Marta Libenson, Mónica Pinus and Catholic priest José Adur, who according to Judge Bonadío formed part of what were known at the time as the Montoneros’ “special infantry troops.”

The Montoneros were leftist guerrillas who supported former President Juan Domingo Perón. At their peak, in the mid-1970s, they had several thousand followers, and were led by Mario Firmenich and Roberto Perdía.

The legal investigators believe the 18 victims were turned in by the top leaders of the Montoneros, who remained in exile at the time, and who had apparently struck a secret deal with the military junta ruling Argentina.

A number of the 18 guerrillas were captured in Argentina. Others were abducted in Brazil, in an action mounted in the framework of Operation Condor, under which the military regimes ruling the Southern Cone countries in the 1970s and 1980s coordinated their repression of real or suspected opponents.

Galtieri, 76, has been in the hospital since a few days after he was put in pre-trial detention in July. Even if he is discharged, he will be eligible for house arrest, a benefit that judges can grant prisoners over 70.

A number of Galtieri’s colleagues who are accused of perpetrating crimes against humanity in the 1970s are also under house arrest, including Nicolaides, Suárez Mason and Riveros, who have been prosecuted for their participation in the kidnapping of the babies and young children of political prisoners.

The children, who were illegally adopted by the families of military personnel or others close to the regime, were taken away by the security forces and “disappeared” along with their parents, or were born in clandestine torture camps.

Their biological parents figure among the 30,000 people who became the victims of forced disappearance under the de facto regime.

Also under house arrest in connection with the kidnapping of the children of political prisoners are former dictators Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera. Lower-ranking officers are serving time in prison.

Videla and Massera were originally sentenced to life in prison in the mid-1980s for crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship. But they and other senior officers were pardoned in 1989 by then-President Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

However, the pardon did not cover the kidnapping and disappearance of minors.

Galtieri was also pardoned in 1989, after being sentenced in 1985 to 12 years in prison for his failed leadership of a 1982 invasion of the Malvinas/Falkland islands, occupied by Britain since 1833. Argentina was defeated by the British in the brief war that ensued.

Galtieri had never before been charged with human rights violations, and is one of the few members of the military junta that ruled during the dictatorship who has not lost his status as a retired officer.

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