ARGENTINA-RIGHTS: ‘Repentant’ Captain Scilingo Arrested in Spain

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 7 1997 (IPS) - The only former Argentine officer who confessed to having participated in the repression in which thousands were tortured and disappeared in the 1976-83 dictatorship here was arrested Tuesday in Spain.

Former navy captain Adolfo Scilingo shocked the world in 1995 with his confessions in a book written by journalist Horacio Verbitsky on the airplane flights from which people were thrown live into the sea.

Since then, Scilingo – dubbed a liar by the government of President Carlos Menem – has become an outspoken “repentant” critic of the repression.

His case reveals a deep contradiction in Argentine society, analysts say. The troops who participated in the repression – in which according to human rights groups around 30,000 people were abducted, tortured and ‘disappeared’ – can speak freely here of their crimes without being arrested or tried, thanks to a pardon and the laws of ‘final stop’ and ‘due obedience’.

At worst, they have been the targets of occasional insults when recognised by former victims and others.

But while enjoying impunity at home, they are wanted in trials taking place in Spain, Italy, France and Sweden. Several officers are unable to leave the country without risking arrest by Interpol (International Police).

Speaking with IPS, Scilingo’s wife admitted that her husband had been warned by his lawyers that he could be detained in Madrid after testifying in the case in which Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon is investigating the fate of some 300 Spanish citizens who ‘disappeared’ during the dictatorship.

“He knew it, his attorneys had warned him and he had no promise from Garzon,” said Marcela Scilingo. “But he has a heavy weight on his conscience, and deep down needs to punish himself for what he did.”

She said she was confident that he would not be held for long, and added that her husband “is taking charge of an affair for which the navy as a whole should give explanations.”

Scilingo’s confessions in 1995 triggered an unprecedented process of “self-criticism” by the armed forces chiefs for their actions during the dictatorship.

The former captain admitted that he had participated in two flights from which people who had been illegally arrested were thrown live into the sea. Up to that time, the flights were only known about from declarations of survivors of clandestine detention centres, who were unable to prove their claims.

Two months after his confession, when he had begun to work with human rights organisations to help identify some of the ‘disappeared’ victims and provide information on their fate, Scilingo was arrested on charges of fraud. He was released from prison this year.

In an interview with IPS during his incarceration, Scilingo said he had data with which to collaborate in the trials over which Garzon was presiding. He added that if Menem was interested, 90 percent of the cases could be clarified.

He also said he preferred to serve time in prison in Spain for his 30 crimes, rather than in Argentina on trumped-up charges of fraud designed to silence him.

Following his release from prison – where he was sent after a trial full of irregularities in which the judge himself was later indicted – Scilingo was forced into a car last month by two men wearing police uniforms. He was held in the car for more than two hours and forced to carve the initials of three independent reporters – “your associates” he was told – into his face with a knife.

The former captain arrived in Madrid this week to testify in the case in which Judge Garzon is investigating the ‘disappearance’ of Spanish citizens.

In the trial on genocide and state terrorism, an arrest warrant has been issued for former General Leopoldo Galtieri, one of the commanders of Argentina’s de facto regime.

Galtieri cannot leave Argentina without being arrested by Interpol. Former navy captain Alfredo Astiz, sentenced in absentia in France for the deaths of two French nuns, is in a similar situation.

Galtieri was pardoned by Menem, and Astiz was released thanks to the laws of ‘final stop’ and ‘due obedience’ issued during the presidency of Raul Alfonsin (1983-89).

Garzon said he would also call for the arrest of former navy chief Emilio Massera, another head of the dictatorship who was pardoned by Menem, as well as 50 troops who operated in the navy’s School of Mechanics, which served as a clandestine detention centre during the de facto regime.

Scilingo, who will continue testifying Wednesday, told Garzon that his cooperation in the airplane flights received the blessing of military chaplains, and that he was given special instructions on how to proceed in cases of pregnant prisoners or kidnapped children.

Pregnant women and children figured among the ‘disappeared’ Spanish victims, and Scilingo had given the name of a navy officer who illegally adopted one of the children and moved to England. But the courts in Argentina shelved the denunciation after waiting in vain for information from the navy.

He also cited a “Machiavellian and sinister” plan for cracking down on leftist groups which he said existed since 1975, a year before the coup d’etat that overthrew Maria Estela Martinez de Peron.