ARGENTINA: Court Reopens Cases on Dictatorship-Era Offences

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 1 2003 (IPS) - An Argentine federal court decided Monday to reopen two notorious cases on human rights violations committed during the last dictatorship (1976-1983). The proceedings had been frozen for the past 16 years by amnesty laws, which Congress voted last month to annul.

Also on Monday, a federal judge ordered the release of some 40 former military officers who had been arrested in late July based on warrants from Interpol (International Police) for potential extradition to Spain to face trial for crimes against humanity.

Marking the reopening of the emblematic cases involving two of the dictatorship’s detention centres – the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) and the First Army Corp – the Federal Chamber (an appellate court) randomly selected the judges who will preside over the proceedings.

Dozens of dictatorship-era military officers are named in the two cases.

ESMA served as a clandestine centre of detention, torture and forced disappearance. An estimated 5,000 political prisoners passed through the centre from 1976 to 1979.

The case involving the First Army Corp is related to the period when it was run by general Guillermo Suárez Mason. From that site he directed at least 40 other detention and torture centres in the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires and throughout that province, many of them housed at local police stations.

Suárez Mason was accused of grave human rights crimes in 1984 and fled to the United States. He was extradited in 1988, but in 1990 was pardoned by then-president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), without having been convicted.

That unusual exculpation, granted prior to the court ruling and sentencing, was considered unconstitutional by many legal experts.

Regardless, the former chief of the First Army Corp is currently under house arrest for other crimes committed during the dictatorship that were not covered by the pardon, such as the illegal appropriation of the young children of political prisoners.

Hundreds of members of the military should return to the courts with the reopening of the two "mega-cases", attorney Rodolfo Yanzón, with the Argentine League for the Rights of Man, told IPS.

The cases involve what are known as "ongoing crimes", such as forced disappearances, in which the fate of the victim is not known.

Nearly 40 notorious agents of the dictatorship were arrested in late July to be extradited to Spain to face trail for crimes against humanity. But the Spanish government of José María Aznar decided Friday not to authorise the corresponding petitions.

Representatives of human rights groups, families of the victims and survivors of the dictatorship’s repression spoke out Monday against federal judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral. He had ordered the arrest of the military officers, and now ordered that they be released.

Estela de Carlotta, head of the group of victims’ relatives, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, expressed her fear that the accused would attempt to flee the country before they can be tried by Argentine courts.

"We want justice now; this very minute – in Spain or in Argentina. Enough delays! It would be an offence against Argentine society to let those criminals go free again," she said.

De Carlotto said that the "aberrant declarations" of some officers who commanded the repressive actions of the dictatorship, broadcast on French television in recent months and published here on the weekend by ‘Página 12’ newspaper, are "sufficient proof" that they committed the serious crimes for which they have been charged.

She was referring to the revelations of retired generals Ramón Díaz Bessone and Benito Bignone, who admitted that there were 7,000 to 8,000 people disappeared by the dictatorship, as well as clandestine executions; and that torture had been used to obtain information.

Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared by the dictatorship’s repressive apparatus.

Díaz was chief of the Second Army Corp and is among the officials who was sought for extradition by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón on charges of crimes against humanity.

In Argentina he was indicted for human rights crimes after the dictatorship but benefited from the amnesty laws known as Full Stop (1986) and Due Obedience (1987), which Congress annulled in August and President Néstor Kirchner signed last week.

Bignone held the Argentine presidency as a member of the dictatorship’s final junta. He was convicted of human rights crimes but later pardoned by Menem. Today, like Suárez Mason, he is under house arrest, serving out his sentence for the illegal appropriate of children.

In an interview with French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, he admitted that the terms of his house arrest are not very strict, as he is allowed to receive visitors and even to leave the premises.

Monday, human rights activists headed to the courts to try – unsuccessfully – to prevent the release of the detained officers of the dictatorship. Their first stop was the court of judge Canicoba Corral.

Spanish judge Garzón, who rose to fame for his ultimately futile attempt to secure the extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, on Saturday urged Canicoba Corral to reissue arrest warrants for the military officers based on the evidence and past records that the he himself had presented to justify Spain’s extradition request.

But the Argentine judge said he could not keep the men behind bars without an order from the Agentine attorney general’s office.

The activists then turned to government prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan, who said he would present a denunciation with the data gathered by Garzón. But as soon as Canicoba Corral received official word from Spain, he ordered the release of the detainees, as there were no other arrest orders pending.

Of the 40 officers that Garzón sought to extradite to Spain, five are serving sentences for the appropriation of minors, including the already mentioned Suárez Mason and Bignone, and former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla.

Among those whose release was announced Monday are some notorious figures of Argentina’s "dirty war", such as former captain Alfredo Astiz, known as the "blonde angel of death", for the assassinations of French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, and Swedish citizen Dagmar Hagelin.

The Federal Chamber decided to reopen the ESMA and First Army Corp cases after the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws were annulled, even though the congressional decision in and of itself does not permit the renewal of the human rights trials.

Indeed, the future of the military officers charged with human rights crimes truly lies in the hands of the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the decisions of the lower courts that the two amnesty laws were unconstitutional.

As the federal appellate court moves forward, the ESMA case is to be heard by judge María Servini, and the First Army Corp case by her colleague, judge Sergio Torres.