2 Argentine Generals Given Jail Terms in Rights Case

An Argentine federal court convicted two army generals and three provincial policemen of massive human rights violations Tuesday in a new chapter of Argentina’s drive to impose justice for the bloody deeds in its past.

Based on the overwhelming testimony of survivors who told of torture and murder in clandestine detention centers under military control, a six-judge court sentenced retired army Gen. Ramon J. Camps to 25 years in prison for crimes committed after a 1976 coup while he was police chief in Buenos Aires province, which includes the capital. The judges found that Camps, a particular target of human rights groups, was guilty of 73 cases of torture.

One of the witnesses was Argentine newspaper editor Jacobo Timerman, who testified that Camps was one of the officials present during sessions when he was tortured. Timerman, who described his ordeal in his book, “Prisoner Without Name, Cell Without Number,” was later aquitted and exiled to Israel.

Ovidio Riccheri, who succeeded Camps, was sentenced to 14 years. Former provincial police commissioner Miguel Etchecolatz, who joined Camps in challenging the authority of the court to try him, was sentenced to 23 years.

Police surgeon Jorge Berges, who witnesses said was present during torture sessions, was sentenced to six years, and Norberto Cozanni, a police corporal, to four years.

Precinct commanders Alberto Rousse and Luis Vides were acquitted in the 160-page decision read by Judge Guillermo Ledesma, who noted the “unrepentant” behavior of the defendants, all of whom exercised their right not to appear at their judgment.

Tuesday’s verdicts underlined a return to the rule of law in Argentina that began three years ago this month with the restoration of elected civilian government after a seven-year military dictatorship.

On assuming the presidency Dec. 10, 1983, Raul Alfonsin, a centrist representing the bourgeois Radical Party, ordered human rights proceedings against nine members of three military juntas that ruled between 1976 and 1982.

In a historic trial last year, five of the nine officers, including two former presidents, were found guilty and sentenced to terms of up to life imprisonment for their direction of a so-called “dirty war” against Marxist terrorists in which at least 9,000 people were murdered by members of security forces.

Now, the Alfonsin government is being pressured from the left by human rights groups that want more cases brought to trial and from the right by the armed forces and their conservative civilian allies who want the proceedings ended.

“We’ve been at this for three years,” Alfonsin told The Times in an interview last month. “It’s necessary to speed things up.”

By count of human rights groups, about 2,000 cases involving between 200 and 300 military personnel and police officers are now pending in civilian and military courts around the country. Many of the cases overlap. In the Camps trial, for example, judges weighed evidence in 280 individual complaints.