Argentine officers, bankers, business owners face human rights abuse trials.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Argentina broke ground in the history of its human rights policy Feb. 17 when it opened the "trial of the judges"--the first instance of this type of criminal justice proceeding. Four former judges who had served during the 1976-1983 dictatorship as well as during the first three administrations of the democratic era--those of former Presidents Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989) and Carlos Menem (1989-1999) --plus 34 military officers have been charged with crimes against humanity under a program aimed at reconstructing what happened to 207 individuals, who had been tortured, killed, disappeared, or who were victims of sexual violence. This is the first time that sexual violence in relation to the regime has been dealt with as a crime.
During the opening session, lead prosecutor Dante Vega said, "The enormous importance of this trial is that it begins to judge the 'civil leg' of the dictatorship, because it is impossible to conceive of state terrorism without reviewing and investigating the role played by the courts and the business community."
In Argentina, no one any longer speaks of a "military dictatorship." When one recalls those nefarious years, one speaks of a "civil-military dictatorship" (NotiSur, Feb. 28, 2014).
Other incidents in the following weeks have reinforced the laudable road that Argentina is following in the area of human rights (NotiSur, July 1, 2011, and Feb. 26, 1992).
On March 20, the civil-military regime's first archive was opened to the public. The archive, found last October, documents the business community's complicity with the dictatorship. A week before, on March 13, the government announced the discovery of a second archive that supports details of the judicial collaboration. Meanwhile, major media figures, who had previously been untouchable, have appeared before the tribunals, accused of having supported the dictatorship through publicity and having participated in the disappearance of union representatives in their media companies.
Wrapping up the auspicious panorama, the Unidad de Informacion Financiera (UIF) issued a report revealing how some military officers laundered dirty money from their own businesses as well as funds from civil mafias. The UIF was created recently to investigate the money trail left by a group of organizations founded by ex-military personnel accused of crimes against humanity for laundering the proceeds of the sale of property stolen from thousands of abducted persons who passed through...
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