Argentina's Dirty War Trials Continue
    By Sam Ferguson
    t r u t h o u t | Report

    Friday 13 July 2007

    Buenos Aires, Argentina - Trials began Tuesday against former Junta member and Commander in Chief of the Army Cristino Nicolaides for crimes committed during Argentina's "dirty war," when up to 30,000 people were disappeared by the military government. The first witnesses also testified on Tuesday in the crimes against humanity case against Father Christian Von Wernich, former chaplain to the Buenos Aires police force.

    From 1976-1983, Argentina was ruled by a military Junta (literally, together) comprised of the heads of the Air Force, Army and Navy. The Junta appointed a de facto president, who ran the country on a day-to-day basis. The military dictatorship was one of the most repressive in Latin America, as it waged a clandestine war against perceived political "subversives" - union leaders, intellectuals, journalists, students, businessmen or those who simply happened to be associated with the opposition. The victims of this campaign are known as the desaparecidos - the "disappeared" - as the government would kidnap them without a trace and then deny that anyone was being held in captivity. To this day, the whereabouts of many are unknown.

    Nicolaides, who served in the last Junta as head of the army, has been indicted for ordering the disappearance and possible execution of six former left-wing guerrillas. In 1997, Ramon Gonzalez, a former member of a torture and execution squad, known as a "work group" under Nicolaides, revealed in a television report that Nicolaides had ordered Ricardo Marcos Zuker, among the six disappeared ones, to the firing range. At the time of the disappearances, Nicolaides was head of the Campo de Mayo Military Institute and the 601st Intelligence Battalion, the Army's intelligence wing.

    Nicolaides is being indicted along with seven colonels of the 601st Batallion, a civil intelligence agent and a former police officer: "El Turco Julián" Simon. All of the defendants had been shielded by a series of amnesty laws passed in the late 1980s in an attempt to pacify the resistant armed forces and consolidate democratic transition. Simon, who was recently sentenced to 25 years in jail on several counts of kidnapping, torture and murder, was the first "dirty warrior" to be sent to prison when the Supreme Court declared the amnesty laws unconstitutional in his case in 2005. Since then, the government has initiated investigations into over 1,000 human rights violations committed by the military dictatorship more than 25 years ago.

    "This is an important case," says Demian Zayat of the Center for Social and Legal Studies (CELS), a human rights NGO founded during the dictatorship that has become a clearinghouse for information on the "disappeared" and has coordinated the legal strategy against the dictatorship. "It is the first case since the amnesty laws were declared void that has been brought against a military official. All of the other cases have involved the Buenos Aires police force. It's an important step ahead." The investigative and legal work of CELS prompted the overturning of the amnesty laws that had previously prevented the prosecution of Argentinian war criminals.

    The case against Nicolaides is also the first case to move forward since the Simon case in Buenos Aires, after nearly six years in process. The next case expected to move forward in Argentina's capital involves the 1976 "Fátima Massacre" - when 30 disappeared persons were drugged and later summarily executed with dynamite. Sources inside the judicial branch say the case is expected to start by early October, though the case has already been delayed by months.

    Witnesses Testify in Priest Trial

    In a related hearing in La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires Province, the trial against Father Christian Von Wernich proceeded, as the first witnesses in the case were called before a three-judge tribunal. Von Wernich has been indicted as an accomplice on seven counts of murder, 30 counts of torture and 41 counts of kidnapping.

    The witnesses were the first to testify in public about human rights crimes committed by the dictatorship since Julio Lopez went missing ten months ago. Lopez, it is suspected, was disappeared after he provided the key testimony against former Buenos Aires Police Chief Miguel Etchecolatz, who was sentenced to life in prison last year for his involvement in the dirty war.

    Most of the day's testimony regarded several incidents where Von Wernich entered Puesto Vasco, a clandestine interrogation center in Buenos Aires Province where the disappeared were detained. There, the witnesses testified, Von Wernich approached them, dressed in priest's garb.

    Hectór Ballent, the first witness to testify, had worked in the Buenos Aires government house and was detained for four and a half months in 1977. From mid-May until mid-July, he was kept at Cotí Martinez - another clandestine detention center - where he faced the "la maquina" torture chamber twice. He was stripped naked, whipped and shocked on his head and genitals. "There, they would ask me questions that could not be answered; they had no response," he told the judges. He was then transferred to Puesto Vasco until the end of September, where he encountered Von Wernich. At the time, Ballent did not know the priest's name, but later saw the priest's picture in the media, and was "absolutely certain" it was him.

    "He told us, 'Why don't you confess, so that you won't be punished anymore?'" related Ballent. "I then asked him, 'if you know we are here, if you know we are being tortured, why don't you do something?' at which point he turned around and left." Ballent did not believe the man was a priest, but thought it was a trap the Army had set up to get information from the prisoners. "He didn't speak like a priest; he never used the language of the church," Ballent said.

    Julio Nazar, former director of La Opinion Magazine, provided the most emotional testimony of the day. He had been openly critical of the military government following the 1976 coup. Friends and family urged him to leave the country after he began to receive threatening calls. "My democratic convictions didn't allow me to be silent on the conditions in which we lived. I would not have my criticisms silenced by the government. I would not leave," Nazar said.

    His blood pressure was noticeably elevated as he answered questions from the tribunal. His face turned bright red and he paused for long breaths between words, fighting back tears.

    According to Nazar, he was sequestered on July 21, 1977, and was disappeared for 14 months. He still does not know where he was taken when two armed men came for him close to midnight and grabbed him off the street. He was denied food, water and access to a bathroom for 2 days. Thereafter, he was also transferred to Puesto Vasco. It was "truly horrible, just as Dante described it." Music would blast late at night as prisoners were taken from their cells, and federal police went to trabajo - "work" - as it was called. Music often blasted through the night, to drown the screams of the tortured from other prisoners.

    One day - he cannot say precisely when because 30 years' time has taken its toll on his memory - a priest arrived. "It gave me hope. Someone from the outside had entered. It would bring to light the conditions we were in. A religious figure could not enter that place and do nothing about it," Nazar said.

    "Von Wernich told me he came to give me spiritual support." Nevertheless, Nazar later realized that "Nobody - especially a priest - could not know what was happening. If you entered, you had permission from the boss. He came in perfectly calm, and knew all of our names. He obviously didn't arrive by chance."

    The defendants both face possible life sentences, although, under the Argentine constitution, the sick and the elderly - 70 years of age or older - are placed under house arrest. Von Wernich and Nicolaides will probably spend most of their time under house arrest, if convicted. Both cases are expected to last until early September.