RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Dismay Over Former Army ‘Fund-Raiser’s’ Release

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 8 2000 (IPS) - An Argentine businessman kidnapped in the 1970s expressed dismay Friday over a court decision to release former military intelligence agent Leandro Sánchez Reisse, a member of a band that collected funds for dictatorships in Latin America through illegal activities like kidnapping.

Financier Fernando Combal was kidnapped in 1979 while riding in a taxi. He was held for 18 hours and tortured with electric shock, and was not released until his family paid a one million-dollar ransom.

Sánchez Reisse was one of the individuals charged with the kidnapping. After he was extradited from Spain in 1995, Argentina’s office of the public prosecutor sought a 12-year sentence, based on the argument that the defendant was the “intellectual author” of the kidnapping.

However, Judge Eduardo Niklison absolved Sánchez Reisse Thursday on the basis of insufficient evidence, despite a 30- volume dossier built up on the case.

Combal, who said he was “aghast” at the acquittal, pointed to evidence that proved beyond a doubt that his kidnapping had occurred, and accused Niklison of taking upon himself the authority to pardon — which is up to the victim — rather than the power to judge, which was his duty.

Niklison stated in his decision that only those directly involved in the case knew the truth, which would remain on their conscience — an ambiguous statement that analysts said might suggest that the judge bought the argument by Sánchez Reisse’s defence counsel that the incident was set up by Combal himself.

The businessman pointed out that he had been trying for 21 years to clear up the case, which was similar to other kidnappings carried out during Argentina’s 1976-83 de facto regime.

During the dictatorship, extortion and kidnappings were frequently used as a means of collecting funds to finance the repression, in which at least 10,000 real or suspected opponents were tortured and “disappeared” by security forces.

Combal pointed out that the public prosecutor’s office had already appealed Thursday’s ruling.

Journalist Juan Gasparini, author of the book “The Swiss Clue”, said Friday that he estimated the total amount collected in ransom by agents of the dictatorship at around 40 million dollars, some of which went toward backing the fight against leftist insurgent groups in countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Chile.

Sánchez Reisse, an accountant, has been identified as the administrator of a group of “fund-raisers” that answered to army intelligence battalion number 601, under which the “Grupo de Tareas Exteriores” also operated in the 1970s, carrying out intelligence work among groups of political exiles abroad.

The former agent was arrested in the 1980s in Geneva when he tried to cash in on a 1.5 million-dollar ransom paid by another businessman kidnapped in Argentina, the Uruguayan Carlos Koldobsky.

The courts in Switzerland ordered that Sánchez Reisse be put behind bars, where he stayed until 1985, when he skipped parole and fled to the United States.

Despite his supposed ties to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Sánchez Reisse was soon arrested in the United States.

He testified before a Senate committee that former major Raúl Guglielminetti and the former head of the first army corps Guillermo Suárez Mason, who have been accused of grave human rights violations, were his superiors.

Sánchez Reisse confessed at the time that the “Grupo de Tareas Exteriores” also specialised in laundering drug money used to fight the guerrillas in Central America.

Through two front companies in Miami, Argentina’s repressive forces laundered 30 million dollars in drug money, according to the former agent’s testimony before the US Senate.

And that money, transferred to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, ended up in the hands of the US- financed Nicaraguan contras fighting the leftist Sandinista government (1979-90).

The CIA was fully aware of the drug trafficking links, according to the testimony given by Sánchez Reisse, who also mentioned the involvement of another former Argentine military agent, Juan Martín Ciga Correa, wanted by the courts here for the 1974 assassination of former Chilean army chief Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires.

After Sánchez Reisse was extradited to Argentina from the United States, a local court here set him free. But another judge reviewed the sentence and issued a warrant for him to be re- arrested. He was captured on the new warrant in Spain in 1995, and extradited once more to Argentina.

On his return, he was held in a building of the gendarmerie where former government officials or judges are imprisoned — popularly known here as the “VIP” prison — until Thursday, when Judge Niklison released him once again.