Dirty War - Truth Commission, Decrees Revoked

Truth Commission, Decrees Revoked

The junta relinquished power in 1983. After democratic elections, president elect Raúl Alfonsín created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in December 1983, led by writer Ernesto Sábato, to collect evidence about the Dirty War crimes. The gruesome details, including documentation of the disappearance of nearly 9,000 people, shocked the world. Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the junta, was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes, including forced disappearances, torture, murders and kidnappings. President Alfonsín ordered that the nine members of the military junta be judicially charged, during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, together with guerrilla leaders Mario Firmenich, Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Rodolfo Galimberti, Roberto Perdía, and Enrique Gorriarán Merlo. As of 2010, most of the military officials are in trial or jail. In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment at the military prison of Magdalena. Several senior officers also received jail terms. In the Prologue to the Nunca Más report ("Never Again"), Ernesto Sábato wrote:

From the moment of their abduction, the victims lost all rights. Deprived of all communication with the outside world, held in unknown places, subjected to barbaric tortures, kept ignorant of their immediate or ultimate fate, they risked being either thrown into a river or the sea, weighted down with blocks of cement, or burned to ashes. They were not mere objects, however, and still possessed all the human attributes: they could feel pain, could remember a mother, child or spouse, could feel infinite shame at being raped in public...

Reacting to the human rights trials, hardliners in the Argentine army staged a series of uprisings against the Alfonsín government. They barricaded themselves in several military barracks demanding an end of the trials. During Holy Week (Semana Santa) of April 1987, Lieutenant-Colonel Aldo Rico (commander of the 18th Infantry Regiment in Misiones province) and several junior army officers, barricaded themselves in the Campo de Mayo army barracks. The military rebels, who were called the carapintadas, called for an end to the trials and the resignation of army chief of staff General Hector Rios Erenu. Rico believed that the Alfonsin government would be unwilling or unable to put down the uprising. He was correct, as the Second Army Corps commander's orders to surround the barracks were ignored by his subordinates. Alfonsin called on the people to come to the Plaza de Mayo to defend democracy, and hundreds of thousands responded. After a helicopter visit by Alfonsin to Campo de Mayo, the rebels finally surrendered. There were denials of a deal but several generals were forced into early retirement and General Jose Dante Caridi was soon replaced Erenu as commander of the army.

In January 1988, a second military rebellion took place when Rico refused to accept the detention orders issued by a military court for having led the previous uprising. This time he set up base in the 4th Infantry Regiment in Monte Caseros and repudiated Caridi's calls to hand himself in. Rico again demanded an end to the human rights trials saying the promises of Alfonsin to the rebels had not been fulfilled. Caridi ordered several army units to suppress the rebellion. Their advance to the Monte Caseros barracks was slowed down by the rains and the news that rebel soldiers had laid mines that had wounded three loyal officers. Nevertheless, Rico's forces were defeated after a three hour battle. They surrendered on 17 January 1988 and 300 rebels were arrested, and sentenced to jail.

A third uprising took place in December 1988. This time the uprising was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Mohammed Alí Seineldín and was supported by 1,000 rebel troops. This uprising proved successful. Several of the demands of Seineldin and his followers were met and Caridi was forced into retirement and replaced by General Francisco Gassino who had served in the Falklands/Malvinas War and was held in high esteem by the carapintadas. On 5 October 1989 as part of a sweeping reform, the newly elected president, Carlos Menem, pardoned those convicted in the human right trials and the rebel leaders imprisoned for taking part in the military uprisings. Menem also pardoned the leftist guerrilla commanders accused of terrorism. In a televised address to the nation, President Menem said, "I have signed the decrees so we may begin to rebuild the country in peace, in liberty and in justice ... We come from long and cruel confrontations. There was a wound to heal."

Some viewed the pardons as a pragmatic decision of national reconciliation that sought to please the military and thus prevent further uprisings. Others condemned it as unconstitutional, noting that the constitutionally acknowledged right of the president to pardon does not extend to those who have not yet been convicted – which was the situation in the case of some military officials. Others yet consider that this presidential privilege is inappropriate for modern times, a relic of monarchic rule that should be abolished. There were others like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize and chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that advocated for forgiveness and reconciliation saying: "without forgiveness there is no future". Lieutenant-General Félix Martín Bonnet, who was then commander of the Argentine Army, welcomed the pardons as an "inspiration of the armed forces, not only because those who had been their commanders were deprived of their freedom, but because many of their present members fought, and did so, in fulfillment of express orders." In September 1999, in the aftermath of the bloodshed witnessed in the break-up from Indonesia, the East Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, also called for reconciliation although not everyone agreed with his decision.

Foreign governments whose citizens were victims of the Dirty War (which included citizens of Czechoslovakia, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Paraguay, Bolivia, Spain, Chile Uruguay, Peru, and several other nations) are pressing individual cases against the former military regime. France has sought the extradition of Captain Alfredo Astiz for the kidnapping and murder of its nationals, among them nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon. Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine naval officer, was convicted in Spain, on 19 April 2005, to 640 years on charges of crimes against humanity. In 1998, Videla received a prison sentence for his role in the kidnapping of eleven children during the regime and for the forgery of the children's identity documents (the "stolen babies", kidnapped from the parents arrested, and raised by military families). Before his death, Videla was serving this sentence under house arrest.

Under the presidency of Carlos Menem, the military, police and left-wing guerrilla commanders accused of killings and torture during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s couldn't be prosecuted for their crimes. However, at the end of 2005, during the presidency of Néstor Kirchner, the Ley de Punto Final and Ley de Obediencia Debida were declared void by Congress, and in 2007 the Supreme Court decided that the pardons were null.

Since 2006, 24 March is a public holiday in Argentina, the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice; that year, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, a multitude filled the streets calling to remember what happened during the military government, and pray it never to happen again.

In 2006, the first trials since the repeal of the "Pardon Laws" began. Miguel Etchecolatz, the police commissioner of the province of Buenos Aires in the 1970s, was the first to face trial for illegal detention, torture and homicide. He was found guilty of six counts of murder, six counts of unlawful imprisonment, and seven counts of torture. A witness in Etchecolatz's trial, Jorge Julio López, went missing hours before he was going to give testimony.

Since then some former Ford Argentine workers have sued the U.S.-based company, alleging that local managers worked with the security forces to detain union members on the premises and torture them. The civil suit against Ford Motor Company and Ford Argentina also calls for four former company executives and a retired military officer to be questioned. According to Pedro Norberto Troiani, one of the plaintiffs, 25 employees were detained in this plant located 40 miles (60 km) from Buenos Aires. Ford has been accused since 1998 of involvement in state repression, but has denied the claims. According to several documents, army personnel arrived at the plant on the day of the military coup, 24 March 1976, and disappearances immediately started. In October 2002, DaimlerChrysler had also announced an external investigation into the claims, made by Amnesty International, that 14 union activists had been handed over to Argentina's military during the Dirty War. In May 1973 the ERP claimed to have extorted $1 million in goods from the Ford Motor Company, after murdering one executive and wounding another. Five months after the payment the guerrillas killed another Ford executive and his three bodyguards. Only after Ford had threatened to close down their operation in Argentina altogether did Peron agree to have his army protect the plant.

There has been a long-running debate in Argentina over the issue of amnesty for officials of the Dirty War. A form of amnesty was controversially adopted as law after the reinstatement of democratic rule and the trials of the top military leaders of the juntas in 1984, during Raúl Alfonsín's presidency (1983–1989), but it has remained unpopular. In June 2005, the Supreme Court overturned the amnesty laws, called Ley de Punto Final ("Full Stop Law") and of Ley de Obediencia Debida ("Law of Due Obedience"), opening the door for prosecutions of former junta officials. The Punto Final law had been voted on 24 December 1986, under Alfonsín's presidency, and extinguished any charges for human rights violations for all acts preceding 12 December 1983.