RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Making Those Responsible for the Dirty War Pay – Literally

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 24 2004 (IPS) - Daniel Tarnopolsky was 18 years old when the security forces in Argentina took away his father, mother, sister, brother and sister-in-law one night in 1976. He never saw any of them alive again.

Daniel Tarnopolsky was 18 years old when the security forces in Argentina took away his father, mother, sister, brother and sister-in-law one night in 1976. He never saw any of them alive again.

Today, at the age of 46, he has achieved what he has been fighting for since 1987: a former member of the military junta has been forced to pay compensation out of his own pocket.

“This is the only case in Argentina in which a former repressor was directly sued, because for my client it was very important that one of them pay,” Tarnopolsky’s lawyer Betina Stein told IPS.

After a lengthy trial for moral and economic damages based on a lawsuit originally filed by Tarnopolsky in 1987, the courts ordered the payment of indemnification by the state and former navy admiral Emilio Massera, one of the first three commanders of Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship.

But while the state paid its part, Massera appealed the verdict over and over again until finally forking over the payment on Monday to prevent the courts from auctioning off the apartment where he is serving house arrest in connection with the theft of the babies of victims of forced disappearance.

The Tarnopolsky case is a prominent symbol of the de facto regime’s “dirty war” not only because of the magnitude of the suffering caused by the forced disappearance and murder of five members of a family of six, but also because it is the only one in which a civil lawsuit has been brought with the specific aim of making those responsible for the dirty war literally “pay”.

The disappearance and murder of the Tarnopolsky family was among the crimes for which the former members of the military junta were convicted and sentenced by the federal courts in 1985.

But two amnesty laws passed in the mid-1980s, which put an end to prosecutions against members of the military, made it impossible for Tarnopolsky to see those directly responsible for the disappearance of his family thrown into prison. He then decided to sue for reparations, in 1987.

According to his lawyer, Tarnopolsky would have preferred that Massera pay 100 percent of the indemnification set in 1994 at 1.2 million dollars.

But the state decided to pay one million – in bonds that form part of the public debt that it defaulted on in December 2001 – leaving the rest to Massera.

The former dictator appealed. But in 1999 the Supreme Court upheld the sentence, ruling that the statute of limitations does not expire in cases of forced disappearance until the victim – or the body – appears.

In 2000, a judge accepted Stein’s request to declare Massera in bankruptcy, which would have led to the auction of all of his assets. Although Massera – who was left bedridden by a stroke two years ago – is wealthy, the only property in his name is the flat where he lives, which was to be auctioned on Sep. 23.

The final amount paid was just over 200,000 pesos (67,000 dollars). “They wanted a reduction, but we flatly refused, because this payment is symbolic,” said Stein.

The money was donated to Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group dedicated to finding the children of the disappeared.

For years, the Abuelas have been seeking the children of the disappeared, who were born to political prisoners in captivity, stolen, and illegally adopted, many of them by military families.

“The payment of indemnification not only amounts to reparations for the victim, but is also a strong condemnation for these people who believe there is nothing worse than having to pay out of their own pockets,” said Stein.

Between 11,000 and 30,000 people – depending on the source of the estimate – became victims of forced disappearance at the hands of the de facto regime.

The law that recognises the right of the families of the disappeared to financial reparations for their loss requires them to officially accept that their missing loved ones are dead, something that many families have not been willing to do.

Stein believes the 1999 Supreme Court ruling on the case opened up a new route for those families to demand economic compensation.

In a moving press conference granted with Estela Carlotto, the president of the Abuelas, Tarnopolsky expressed his hope that the money would be “purified” through the activities of the human rights group.

He also showed photos of his family “for you to see that the disappeared are people, not ghosts.”

“This was Hugo, my father. He was an industrial chemist,” said Tarnopolsky, holding up a black-and-white photo.

He then presented photos of his mother, Blanca, an educational psychologist; his sister Bettina, who was 15 the night the family was taken away; his brother Sergio, 21; and his brother’s wife Laura De Luca, also 21.

In a conversation with IPS, Tarnopolsky pointed out that Massera was convicted in 1985 for the abduction of his family, among other cases. But in 1990, the pardon issued by then-president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) left Massera and other former junta members free.

However, the pardon did not cover the civil lawsuit brought by Tarnopolsky in 1987.

For the only survivor of the Tarnopolsky family, the struggle is not over. He said he is waiting for the Supreme Court to uphold the revocation of the amnesty laws, which Congress annulled in 2003.

If the Supreme Court ratifies the parliamentary decision, the perpetrators of the dictatorship’s crimes against humanity could be tried in court.

Daniel Tarnopolsky survived because on the night his family was taken away, he was sleeping over at a friend’s house.

His brother Sergio was doing his military service in the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), the most notorious clandestine torture centre.

Sergio, a militant in the Peronist Youth –- part of the left wing of the Peronist party – along with his wife Laura, had been assigned as assistant to former navy captain Jorge Acosta.

Acosta, who was head of the navy intelligence task force unit GT-332, is currently under arrest, like Massera, in connection with the theft of babies kidnapped with their parents or born in captivity.

“My brother saw strange things in ESMA, and he told us about a lot of those things at home,” said Tarnopolsky. In one of his accounts, Sergio told his family that he was ordered to clean up traces of blood and identity documents in a basement in ESMA, which today is being prepared to open as a Museum of Memory to commemorate the victims of the de facto regime.

From the personal accounts of survivors, Tarnopolsky found out that Acosta had ordered that his family be seized, and that he boasted about it in ESMA.

“They even told me he was furious that I was able to escape,” said Tarnopolsky, who fled to Israel and is now living in the United States.

Two days after Sergio talked about what he had seen in the ESMA basement, he called home to say he was being disciplined (he did not explain why) and would not be allowed to return home that night. Later his wife, parents, and 15-year-old sister, who was spending the night at her grandmother’s house, were hauled away.

“Now I just hope that Acosta is put in the dock and forced by the courts to explain what my brother did to trigger such a reprisal,” said Tarnopolsky, who does not know what happened to his family in the end, but assumes they were thrown into the Río de la Plata estuary, into which thousands of the disappeared were dumped from planes, drugged but alive. )