Life terms for ‘Dirty War’ crimes
ARGENTINA: Argentina sentenced 29 people, some with nicknames like ‘‘Blond Angel of Death’’ and ‘‘The Tiger’’, to life sentences yesterday in a trial involving nearly 800 cases of kidnapping, torture and murder during the 1976-83 dictatorship.
Many defendants, including former navy captains Alfredo Astiz and Jorge Acosta, were already serving life sentences for ‘‘Dirty War’’ crimes committed at the ESMA Naval Mechanics School, which was converted into a clandestine prison and torture centre.
For the first time in the socalled ESMA mega-case, however, yesterday’s sentences included convictions for ‘‘death flights’’, when people were drugged and their bodies dumped from aircraft into the River Plate or the Atlantic Ocean.
‘‘Giving sedatives to our loved ones before or during the flight before throwing them in the river or the sea is unbelievable, it’s dismal,’’ said Lita Boitano, head of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons.
Boitano, who lost two children during the dictatorship, was among the hundreds of people who gathered outside the federal courthouse in Buenos Aires to listen to the convictions. They took more than three hours to read.
Family members of the victims were in court to listen to the verdicts, while human rights activists watched the court session on a screen outside, applauding every life sentence.
In addition to the life sentences, 19 people received jail terms of eight to 25 years.
Six were cleared of wrongdoing, including Juan Alemann, a finance minister during the dictatorship and one of few civilians who had been accused of planning rights abuses.
Human rights groups estimate that Argentina’s military government killed up to 30,000 people during the dictatorship. Most of their bodies were never found.
The court heard testimony from about 800 people on events at the ESMA, where alleged government opponents were illegally detained, tortured and killed.
About 5000 dissidents were held there, and only about 200 people are known to have survived. Babies born at the ESMA were adopted by military families and stripped of their identities.
The court investigated 789 charges related to crimes at the ESMA. Some of the initial 68 defendants died during the trial, which started in 2012.
Astiz had been convicted in absentia in Europe of killing two French nuns held at the ESMA, which opened to the public as a human rights memorial in 2007.
Argentina has prosecuted many dictatorship-era crimes, and last year convicted 15 ex-military officials of conspiring to kidnap and assassinate leftist dissidents as part of the Operation Condor programme.
But a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year to decrease jail time for those convicted of human rights abuses spurred protests and stoked fears of backsliding.
– Reuters, DPA