Dirty War - Continuing Controversies

Continuing Controversies

On 23 January 1989, in a replay of the previous decade's events, a heavily armed group of around 40 guerrillas, a faction of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP or All for the Fatherland Movement), attacked the La Tablada army barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in an attempt to "prevent" a military coup. The attack resulted in fierce fighting, with 28 of the guerrillas killed, five disappeared and 13 imprisoned. Eleven police and military died and 53 were wounded in the fighting. The Argentinian president of the time, Raúl Alfonsín, declared that the attack, with the ultimate goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, could have led to civil war. According to the guerrillas, they felt there was going to be a military coup.

In 1992 and 1994, two bombs devastated the Argentinian Jewish community in Buenos Aires and marked the arrival, for the first time, of Middle Eastern terrorism in Latin America. On 17 March 1992, 29 people were killed and 242 injured when a car bomb exploded in the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. On 18 July 1994, two years after the bombing of the Israeli Embassy, a bomb exploded in front of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 86 people and wounding several hundred more. While the two cases, which are thought to be related, have been officially under investigation for over 17 years, little progress has been made, and the responsible parties have not yet been apprehended. Argentine president Cristina Kirchner has refused to define the AMIA terrorist attack as a crime against humanity since this could be turned against various ex-Montonero members now serving in her administration that are linked to terrorism. George Karim Chaya, a journalist and political analyst, in 2009 told a group of relatives of victims of the left wing terrorism that both attacks were conducted by Hezbollah and Montoneros terrorists. All initial suspects in the attack, including policemen and ex-carapintadas were later found not to be not guilty in 2004 and federal judge Juan José Galeano, in charge of the case, was impeached and removed from his post for having paid $400,000 to a suspect, Carlos Telleldín, to falsely accuse police officers of being involved in the plot.

In 2001, Jorge Zorreguieta, a civilian who was former Undersecretary of Agriculture in the Videla regime, became the focus of attention when his daughter Máxima became engaged to the Prince of Orange. The significance of his potential connection to the Dutch Royal Family, and his possible presence at a royal wedding was hotly debated for several months. Zorreguieta claimed that, as a civilian, he was unaware of the Dirty War while he was a cabinet minister. Professor Baud, who on request of the Dutch government did an inquiry in the involvement of Zorreguieta, concluded that would it have been unlikely for a person in such a powerful position in the government to be unaware of the Dirty War. Formal charges have never been brought against him, but he was banned from attending the royal wedding which was held in Amsterdam on 2 February 2002. A 2007 documentary about the kidnapping and presumed death of Marta Sierra, a biologist working for the INTA, suggests Jorge Zorregueta's complicity in the crime.

Under Néstor Kirchner's term as president, the Argentine Congress revoked a pair of longstanding amnesty laws that had protected hundreds of officers, regardless of rank, from prosecution for the kidnapping, torture and killing of guerrillas and critics of the military regime. Throughout her presidency, Cristina Kirchner has vigorously maintained her prosecution of the military officers responsible for the disappearances. The effort to prosecute junior officers has divided Argentine politicians, former lieutenant-colonel Aldo Rico, a conservative opposition leader and Falklands/Malvinas War hero among those arguing that it is counterproductive to "return to the past." "The subversive terrorists committed their killings in a systematic manner" federal legislator Nora Ginzburg, representing 677 affidavits concerning civilians and servicemen killed in leftist terrorist acts, wrote in an article published in Nueva Provincia newspaper. "They possessed a military structure, specific units, and had their flag and logo", wrote Ginzburg.

On 14 December 2007, some 200 ex-soldiers who fought against the rural guerrillas in Tucumán province demanded an audience with the governor of Tucumán Province, José Jorge Alperovich, claiming they too were victims of the "Dirty War", and demanded a government sponsored military pension as veterans of the counter-insurgency campaign in northern Argentina.

In February 2010, a German court issued an international arrest warrant for former dictator Jorge Videla in connection with the death of 20-year-old Rolf Stawowiok, a German citizen who was born in Argentina while his father was doing development work, disappeared on 21 February 1978, after leaving the Argentine factory where he was then working as a chemist. His father, Desiderius Stawowiok, said that Rolf was not active in the Argentine underground but was a sympathiser of the urban Montoneros guerrilla, which was largely destroyed under Videla.

The commander of the Montoneros, Mario Firmenich, in a radio interview in late 2000 from Spain later stated that "In a country that experienced a civil war, everybody has blood in their hands."