RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Supreme Court Takes Step Toward Ending Impunity

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 8 2003 (IPS) - Argentina’s Supreme Court took another step Monday toward ending the impunity enjoyed by human rights violators, ruling that the father of a young Swedish victim of forced disappearance could sue for justice even though he already received reparations.

In its verdict, the Court ruled that Ragnar Hagelin has the right to seek justice in the case of his daughter, Dagmar, who was allegedly shot and wounded by former navy captain Alfredo Astiz and later ”disappeared” during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, despite the fact that he received compensation from the Argentine state in 2000.

In an earlier ruling last month, the Court dismissed a plea filed by former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla who is under house arrest on charges of kidnapping the babies of political prisoners.

Both rulings came after Congress decided last month to annul the amnesty laws passed in 1986 and 1987 that put an end to the prosecutions of 2,000 members of the military for human rights crimes committed during the de facto regime, when as many as 30,000 people were ”disappeared”, according to the estimates of human rights groups.

Although the annulment was not retroactive with respect to legal cases, it could have that effect if the Supreme Court upholds verdicts handed down by courts of first and second instance in which judges have ruled that the amnesty laws enacted under pressure from the military were unconstitutional.

For that reason the Court’s seven-to-one ruling on the Hagelin case has special significance.

Dagmar Hagelin, a Swedish-Argentine citizen, was ”disappeared” in January 1977, when she was 17 years old. According to several witnesses, she was mistaken for another woman, María Antonia Berger, who the armed forces wanted to arrest.

She was reportedly shot by Astiz, one of Argentina’s most notorious former torturers.

A taxi driver told the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, which was created after the dictatorship, that Astiz forced him to stop, piled the seriously injured young woman into the trunk, and drove her to the Navy Mechanics School, which operated as a clandestine torture centre during the de facto regime.

The Hagelin family lawyer, Horacio Méndez, told IPS that Dagmar was later held in the Naval Hospital in the southeastern city of Mar del Plata, where she was visited by Astiz. Despite the international pressure for her release, she never reappeared.

The disappearance of the Swedish teenager became one of the emblematic cases of the dictatorship’s repression. In the 1980s, the case was clarified, but the perpetrators were not convicted either in Argentina or Sweden.

Astiz was tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison in France for the forced disappearance of French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Dusquet.

But the Swedish courts did not request his extradition because under the laws of that country, the statute of limitations had run out on Hagelin’s murder, said Méndez, who also represents the families of the two nuns.

Before the amnesty laws were passed, the courts in Argentina only agreed to prosecute Astiz for ”illegal deprivation of liberty,” a crime for which the statute of limitations had already run out by the time his guilt was proven in 1986.

”We were unable to prove that torture was committed, as was proven in the case of the French nuns,” said Méndez.

In 1995, Astiz was cashiered by the navy after publicly stating that he was ”the best-trained person in Argentina for assassinating a politician or a reporter.”

Ragnar Hagelin, who lives in Sweden, received reparations from the Argentine state for the damages he suffered because of his daughter’s disappearance, but he has never stopped seeking justice in the courts.

Dagmar’s father told journalists from an Argentine radio station Monday that it was ”an immense joy” to hear of the Court’s decision, especially because the military had argued that he had signed a document stating that he would stop pursuing justice in the courts, in exchange for the compensation he had been paid.

Hagelin said the families of the ”disappeared” were given the right to claim reparations by simply filling out an application form, but he preferred instead to sue the Argentine state for damages. The judge ruled in his favour, and he was paid in bonds.

However, Hagelin successfully invoked the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, which went into effect in July 1978, and which states that indemnification of this kind must be paid in cash.

”When I was paid, I signed an agreement that prohibited me from making a claim to further monetary compensation for the same case. But I never did and never would sign anything that meant that I would stop demanding justice in the courts for the disappearance of my daughter, which I continue to do 27 years later,” said Hagelin.

In August, the Court rejected an appeal by Videla in which the former army chief’s lawyers argued that the crime of theft of children, in connection with which he is under house arrest, should be considered ”res judicata” (a matter already decided by a court and not subject to litigation again).

The plea filed by Videla’s lawyers was based on the argument that he and other members of the military juntas that governed the country during the dictatorship were already tried and convicted for human rights abuses shortly after the country returned to democracy, and were pardoned by former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

The decision issued last month by the Court stated that the 1994 reform of Argentina’s constitution had incorporated international human rights treaties which establish that the crimes against humanity of which Videla was found guilty are not subject to any statute of limitations or amnesty.

It also states that Videla was an ”armchair author” of those crimes, because he did not directly take part in them, but made others do the dirty work.

Monday’s ruling in the Hagelin case strengthens the growing perception in this Southern Cone country that most of the Supreme Court magistrates aim to put an end to the impunity enjoyed for so many years by the human rights violators.