Torture Called Specialty at Argentine Hospital : Thugs Replaced Medics at Facility, Judges Told; Testimony Ends in Junta Trial

Four months of searing public testimony ended Wednesday in this young democracy’s attempt to mete out justice for an epidemic of state terrorism that has taken thousands of lives.

Testimony in the trial of Argentina’s nine former senior officers--all members of successive ruling juntas and including three former presidents--ended as it began in April, with accusations of kidnaping, torture and murder.

Witnesses told the six federal judges hearing the case that a clandestine detention and torture center was established at a public hospital in a Buenos Aires suburb after two army doctors, both colonels, took control of the hospital following the military coup of March, 1976.

About 30 doctors, nurses and hospital staff members were subsequently abducted and replaced by personnel nicknamed the “SWAT team,” witnesses told the court. The bodies of one doctor and an employee of the hospital were found. Eight other hospital staff members are still among Argentina’s nearly 9,000 desaparecidos --those who disappeared.

Swift Verdict Possible

With the completion of testimony by almost 1,000 witnesses, the trial was recessed until early next month to allow the prosecution and defense time to formulate their final arguments. The judges may render a verdict by October, in the first attempt by Argentine civilians to call military leaders to account for their excesses.

“The trial has proved an effective and historic instrument in the search for justice,” said Horacio Mendez, a human rights lawyer who has been a regular spectator at the proceedings.

Federal prosecutor Julio Strassera decided not to summon an additional 1,000 witnesses he had planned on calling. He said the charges against the officers who ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 had been amply proven during 77 public sessions.

Strassera has argued that the military juntas carried out a systematic, nationwide campaign of terror as the keystone of the military’s repression of Marxist guerrillas between 1976 and 1980. He accused them of kidnaping, torture, murder, and theft or forgery of public documents.

Last year, a blue-ribbon presidential commission termed Argentina’s so-called dirty war the “greatest and most savage tragedy in our history.” The officers are being tried by a civilian court under the military code of justice at the orders of civilian President Raul Alfonsin. Military tribunals had, in effect, refused to judge their peers.

Lawyers’ Arguments

Lawyers defending the nine officers have said they honorably commanded an institution thrust by a civilian government into urban and rural conflict with orders to “annihilate” the guerrillas. The defense insisted that human rights abuses were not a matter of policy, but may have resulted from the nature of the struggle or were the work of overzealous subordinates.

In the course of the trial, Strassera produced testimony that contradicted such defense assertions. Witnesses swore that the commanders were not only aware of the repression but were pleased with its results.

There was testimony that the army, navy and air force all maintained centers for the detention and torture of prisoners who had been taken from their homes by armed forces or police patrols.

According to this testimony, the largest and most sinister of the clandestine centers was administered by the navy at a school for mechanics in a northern neighborhood of Buenoa Aires. Strassera said that several thousand detainees were taken there and that “not many came out alive.” Among those last seen alive were a Swedish teen-ager, two French nuns and two Argentine diplomats.

Court sources said that Strassera will ask the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for the officers of the first junta--former President Jorge Rafael Videla, a general; Adm. Emilio Massera and Brig. Gen. Orlando Agosti.

The prosecutor will also seek life imprisonment for Gen. Roberto Viola, who succeeded Videla as president in 1981, the sources said. Strassera will ask for lesser sentences in the cases of Adm. Armando Lambruschini and Brig. Gen. Omar Graffigna, who served in the Viola junta.

Lesser penalties will be sought, too, for Gen. Leopoldo F. Galtieri, who succeeded Viola as president in late 1981, and two other junta members, Adm. Jorge Anaya and Brig. Gen. Basilio Lami Dozo, the sources said.

The Galtieri junta is also being court-martialed, for losing the 1982 Falkland Islands war with Britain. Military prosecutors are seeking 12-year prison terms for Galtieri and Anaya and eight-year terms for Lami Dozo, it was reported here this week. Thirteen other officers are to be tried for their roles in the war, but no specific charges have been made public.

Alfonsin, who ordered the human rights trial soon after constitutional government was restored to Argentina in December, 1983, has described the trial as an essential means of restoring the rule of law in Argentina.

Plea for Unity

Now that the trial is a fact, and guilty verdicts are a foregone conclusion, Alfonsin is appealing for national reconciliation.

The Argentine president is buffeted both by humans rights activists who want to see all those accused of abuses put on trial--about 1,200 in all--and by military officers strongly opposed to any additional trials. Retired and younger officers are particularly resistant, saying they should not be called to account for obeying orders.

Individual proceedings have already begun against a handful of former high-ranking army and navy officers. There have been persistent reports, though, that the government is considering at least a partial amnesty, perhaps by limiting further accusations to field-grade officers.

Thus far, the government, which faces mid-term congressional elections in November, denies that it is contemplating any sort of amnesty.