ARGENTINA: Rights Abusers Violate House Arrest

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 4 2004 (IPS) - In Argentina, 82 members of the military have been convicted and sentenced over the past few years for gross human rights violations committed by the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

But there have been reports that some of the 11 former officers under house arrest – often in posh suburban estates – regularly violate their detention orders.

The latest such report has led to the revocation of the house arrest conditions enjoyed by former general Guillermo Suárez Mason, who is serving time on 635 separate charges.

According to an anonymous message sent to the Foreign Ministry Monday, Suárez Mason left his apartment to attend an 80th birthday party thrown for him at a local football club on Jan. 23.

The incident not only gave rise to orders by a judge that Suárez Mason be transferred to a prison in Marcos Paz, in the province of Buenos Aires, but also to the removal of Ecuador’s ambassador to Argentina.

Suárez Mason was the only former member of the dictatorship’s ruling junta to flee the country before the generals were tried in 1985.

Although he was found in the United States and extradited in 1988, shortly after his return he was let off the hook by the pardon issued by then-president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), which made him the only former commander to be pardoned before he was even sentenced.

The prosecutions of lower-ranking members of the military were also brought to an end by two amnesty laws, which were eventually overturned late last year.

But in 1998, the courts began to hear cases against members of the military accused of involvement in the theft of babies born to women detained in the ”Dirty War”, during which as many as 30,000 real or suspected opponents of the regime were ”disappeared” by the security forces.

The theft of babies born to political prisoners in clandestine torture centres was not covered by the pardon.

As a result, Suárez Mason and other human rights abusers began to be arrested again, in connection with what human rights groups describe as the ”systematic” theft of babies, who were usually given to military and police families for adoption.

Two other lawsuits brought against Suárez Mason after his arrest involved the abduction and murder of 20 members of the Montoneros, a leftist armed group, in 1979.

In addition, there are international arrest warrants out for the former general, issued by courts in Germany, Spain and Italy for abuses committed against foreign nationals by the de facto regime.

House arrest can be requested in Argentina by prisoners over 70 or AIDS patients.

But lawyer Carolina Vartsky, director of the Memory Programme at the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, a local human rights group, told IPS that house arrest ”is not a benefit but a guarantee” that is granted ”independently of the gravity of the crime,” and that ”the necessary precautions must be taken to enforce it.”

According to Argentine law, guards do not need to be posted to ensure that people under house arrest do not leave their homes.

But if it is proven that they went out without permission, the judge who sentenced them can revoke the house arrest order and throw them in jail, or into a military prison in the case of human rights abusers in the armed forces.

Suárez Mason denied Tuesday that he had left his downtown Buenos Aires apartment.

The former general was the commander of the fearsome First Army Corps from 1976 to 1979. Most of the regime’s victims of forced disappearance were held in one of the more than 40 clandestine detention and torture centres that operated under his jurisdiction.

But Ecuador’s (now-ex) ambassador to Argentina, Colonel Germánico Molina, admitted that on Jan. 23 he visited Suárez Mason’s apartment to give him a gift, and said that while he was there, a friend arrived to invite the former general to a birthday dinner arranged in his honour.

According to Molina, the friend took Suárez Mason to the party.

However, the Foreign Ministry’s chief adviser, Eduardo Valdés, said an anonymous fax received by the ministry stated that Molina himself picked up Suárez Mason in his diplomatic car, and drove him home five hours later.

After receiving the fax, Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa contacted Molina, who confirmed that he attended the dinner with Suárez Mason. But he said he had gone to the former general’s apartment merely to deliver a gift on behalf of Rubén Chiriboga, the son of an Ecuadorian diplomat.

”In four years, I have only left my home to go to the Military Hospital,” said Suárez Mason. ”I was not in the (Argentinos Juniors football) club. You can call and verify that.”

The Foreign Ministry asked the Ecuadorian government to withdraw its ambassador, and Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutiérrez removed Molina from his post Tuesday.

The president of the human rights organisation Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carloto, described Molina’s visit to Suárez Mason’s apartment as a ”mockery” of the justice system, and demanded that the former general be immediately put in prison.

But Suárez Mason was apparently not the first human rights abuser to violate house arrest. The oldest reported case was that of former admiral Emilio Massera, who was spotted in downtown Buenos Aires in 1986, prior to Menem’s pardon, when he was supposed to be in a military jail.

When Massera was arrested again, for the theft of babies born to political prisoners, he requested house arrest. But in 1999 he was photographed by a reporter as he took a walk outside the grounds of his country house, which is fully equipped with swimming pool and tennis courts.

The courts did not revoke house arrest at that time, but shortly thereafter Massera was permanently admitted to the Naval Hospital with serious health problems.

However, neither Massera nor the majority of the detained human rights abusers would be able to leave the country without risking arrest by Interpol, because they face international arrest orders for crimes against humanity being tried in Spain and other offences under investigation by courts in European countries like France, Germany and Italy.

Yet another case involved former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, under house arrest in connection with the theft of babies and other abuses committed by the de facto regime. Four years ago, local residents saw him attending mass at a church in Torquinst, in the province of Buenos Aires, where one of his daughters lives.

Former commander Reynaldo Bignone, also serving house arrest for theft of babies, told a French journalist that he went out ”every day” for different reasons, such as taking a swim in the Military Club, or to take part in meetings at an institution attended by his disabled son.

Carlos Tepedino, an army battalion commander during the regime, who is also under house arrest on similar charges, was photographed a year ago outside his Buenos Aires apartment. Shopkeepers and residents in the area said he frequently went out to run small errands.