ARGENTINA: Hopes for Faster Progress in Human Rights Cases Dashed

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 21 2005 (IPS) - When the Argentine Supreme Court ruled in June that the country’s amnesty laws were unconstitutional, the families of victims of human rights abuses and activists hoped that lawsuits involving crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship would receive a major boost.

But little headway has been made in the human rights cases, and the outlook is discouraging.

The lawsuits are moving ahead slowly, hurdles are cropping up at every turn, the oral phase of the trials has been postponed, and the accused – most of the former members of the military junta are elderly – are dying off, going senile or being released from preventive detention, as occurred this month with several retired military officers under arrest for stealing the babies of political prisoners who were later “disappeared”.

The amnesty laws passed in 1986 and 1987, under then president Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989), kept thousands of members of the military who kidnapped, tortured and “disappeared” 10,000 people, according to official figures – or 30,000 according to human rights groups – out of the courts.

But Congress revoked the two laws in 2003, shortly after centre-left President Néstor Kirchner took office. And last June, the Supreme Court ratified the legislative decision based on international treaties signed by Argentina that state that crimes against humanity cannot be amnestied and are subject to no statute of limitations.

Human rights activists and the relatives of victims celebrated the Supreme Court ruling at the time, which allowed more than 40 different lawsuits to proceed.

But today, the battle against impunity seems to be losing ground, while the rights abusers continue to evade justice.

In January, the federal courts suspended a case for baby theft against former navy chief Emilio Massera, one of the three military commanders who staged the 1976 coup d’etat, because he was left mentally and physically disabled two years ago by a stroke. He was declared unfit to stand trial in three other cases as well.

In June, former general Guillermo Suárez Mason died at the age of 81. He was facing charges for 80 homicides, 250 abductions and 12 cases of baby theft (stealing the infants or small children of imprisoned dissidents). The former junta commander was under arrest and his case was about to move into the oral phase of the trial.

The Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a local human rights group, and the Attorney-General’s Office report that more than 50 of the accused have died during the legal processes.

There are currently 260 former police and members of the military under arrest in Argentina for human rights violations, 50 of whom are being held in house arrest because they are over 70.

Several of them have been released from preventive detention because of excessive delays in the legal processes.

Although their involvement in dozens of cases of baby theft and falsification of the identity of the children of the “disappeared” has been proven, former dictators Jorge Videla, Cristino Nicolaides and Reinaldo Bignone, as well as officers Santiago Riveros, Jorge Acosta, Héctor Febres, Rubén Franco and Antonio Vañek were released in connection with one or another of the cases against them.

Most of them actually remain under arrest in other cases, with the exception of Bignone and Franco, who were freed in all of the cases they face.

Although federal Judge Guillermo Montenegro had rejected the request for their release, the appeals court ruled that they had spent an unreasonable amount of time in preventive detention due to the slow pace of the legal process.

The lawsuit in connection with the theft of babies born into captivity to political prisoners or kidnapped with their parents was filed in 1996 by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group.

That crime had been left out of the mid-1980s trials of the members of the military junta, who were convicted but later pardoned by president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) early in his first term. Baby theft was hence not covered by the pardon.

Thus, the former commanders and other members of the military who had been let off the hook by the pardon and the amnesty laws were arrested once again, this time for baby snatching.

But since then, the case has been moving ahead at a snail’s pace due to a number of reasons, including a lack of will, changes of judges, legal maneuvers by the defence, and technical errors.

In an interview with IPS, the vice-president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Rosa Roisinblit, complained that in Argentina, “the justice system is very slow.”

“The judges leave the files dormant in their drawers and the time limits considered reasonable for holding someone in preventive detention expire,” said the activist.

After legal action began to be taken in the cases of baby theft, Roisinblit finally tracked down her grandson, Rodolfo Pérez, who was born in captivity and illegally adopted by a former human rights abuser and registered as his own son.

When Pérez’s parents were abducted in 1978, his mother was eight months pregnant.

Lawyer Ramón Torres, one of the Grandmothers’ legal representatives, admitted to IPS that the court decision to release several officers from preventive arrest “was a step that was expected because of the excessive delays in the cases.” Some of the accused have been held for up to seven years.

He said the responsibility for the delay is shared by all sides. On one hand, Torres said it was a “mistaken” decision for the families of the victims to accumulate up to 30 cases in one lawsuit rather than allowing each one to proceed on its own. And on the other, the defence attorneys are using all of the usual legal recourses to slow down the process, he added.

Torres predicted that the baby theft case could move to the oral phase of the trial late this year or in early 2006. “But that doesn’t mean the trial will immediately get underway,” because the legal arguments presented by the defence counsel will first have to be resolved, he added.

Dozens of other cases are also moving ahead at a painfully slow pace. Many of them were reopened after the amnesty laws were revoked. One of the highest profile involves the First Army Corps, whose military district encompassed the city and province of Buenos Aires and part of the neighbouring province of La Pampa. A total of 42 clandestine torture camps operated in that jurisdiction during the de facto regime.

Another case involves the Navy School of Mechanics, the dictatorship’s biggest and most notorious torture centre, many of whose victims were dumped alive but drugged into the sea from military helicopters and planes.