RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: ‘Dirty War’ Past Sinks Border Guard Chief

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 26 2005 (IPS) - In keeping with its proactive stance on human rights questions, the Argentine government removed the head of the Gendarmerie border guard Monday, just one day after a local newspaper reported that he was implicated in the forced disappearance of nine people during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

“His dismissal does not mean that we are accusing him. But we cannot have a man who is questioned at the head of a security force,” said Interior Minister Anibal Fernández, referring to the removal of Gendarmerie commander Pedro Pasteris.

The Buenos Aires daily “Clarín” reported Sunday that from Jan. 1, 1980 to Jan. 14, 1983, Pasteris was in charge of security along the international bridge over the Uruguay River that links the northeastern Argentine town of Paso de los Libres with the town of Uruguayana in Brazil.

During that period, at least nine people were “disappeared” as they attempted to enter or leave the country across the bridge.

One of the victims was Lorenzo Viñas, who was arrested in Brazil by the military (during that country’s 1964-1985 de facto regime), along with Catholic priest Jorge Azur.

They were taken across the bridge and turned over to the Argentine security forces.

In an interview Monday, Viñas’ wife Claudia Alegrini told IPS that the dictatorship’s crimes in that border area in the northeastern province of Corrientes “have been kept silent all this time.”

Alegrini knew her husband had been detained in Brazil and handed over to Argentina. But she had always believed that he was held in Campo de Mayo, the army headquarters on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires.

Earlier this year, however, she discovered that he had also been held in another torture camp, near Paso de los Libres, known as La Polaca.

The cases of forced disappearance in the province of Corrientes are a relatively unknown chapter of Argentina’s “dirty war”, and information only recently began to emerge, starting with the testimony of a former civilian military intelligence agent.

Former army intelligence agent Carlos Waern revealed in May that during the de facto regime, the army brought detainees to the bridge from other parts of the country and forced them to point out members of opposition political organisations and suspected guerrillas.

The case of Paso de los Libres formed part of the so-called “Operación Murciélago”, carried out by the dictatorship in 1979 to closely guard Argentina’s border crossings with Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in order to confront what was called the “counteroffensive” launched from abroad by exiled leaders of the guerrilla group Montoneros.

Alegrini said that among the political prisoners used in Operación Murciélago to identify people who were later “disappeared” were two captive Montoneros leaders, Amilcar Arqueti and Silvia Tolchinsky.

Today, Tolchinsky lives in Barcelona, Spain, with her husband: former army intelligence agent Claudio Scagliusi, who she met while she was held and tortured as a political prisoner.

“In Paso de los Libres, the army rented a house for Tolchinsky for six months, and she lived there while she was involved in the vigilance along the bridge, turning in her companions,” said Alegrini.

The courts may now summon her to testify, although it is not clear whether or not she can be charged in this case, said Alegrini.

Tolchinsky was secretary to Montoneros chief Mario Firmenich, and she lived in exile in Mexico and Cuba before she was detained on her way back to Argentina.

According to Waern, the people detained on the bridge were handed over to the army by the Gendarmerie.

But since the local army post was small, a clandestine detention centre was set up on the La Polaca farm, one kilometre away from the bridge, where “around 300 people” were held at one time or another, according to the former intelligence agent.

After his testimony came out, a local human rights group asked Alegrini to take part as a plaintiff in the case opened in Paso de los Libres. She travelled there in June and testified before the judge handling the case, providing him with what information she had about the fate of her husband.

She was also given a tour of La Polaca, which she described as “a remote place near the Uruguay River, where I would suppose that a lot of the ‘disappeared’ were taken, because they could be buried among the reeds or thrown into the river, and nobody would ever know.”

The farm had a cellar where the prisoners were thrown, to be bitten by snakes, said Alegrini.

“I visited the town and the farms near La Polaca, and it turns out that the local residents know a lot about what went on there, and they knew Tolchinsky, but everything has been kept hushed up,” she said.

According to the Clarín report, a source with the Gendarmerie who worked with Pasteris in Paso de los Libres said the former chief “was fully aware of what was happening at the bridge.”

“His gendarmes kidnapped the people who were pointed out,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Based on this information, the centre-left government of Néstor Kirchner decided to sack Pasteris, who was promoted in November after a purge of 12 of the Gendarmerie’s 16 commanders, prompted by a scandal over the alleged mishandling of public tenders for services run by the Gendarmerie.

“The government had no choice but to dismiss him, because the judge in Paso de los Libres was going to have to summon him to testify,” said Alegrini.