S.F. Hearing in Murder, Torture Cases : Extradition of Argentine General Urged

A U.S. prosecutor representing Argentina urged a federal judge Monday to extradite the last remaining general who has not been tried for torture and murder committed during the Argentine military’s reign.

Retired Gen. Carlos G. Suarez Mason sat impassively during the daylong hearing at which he was accused of complicity in scores of murders and illegal arrests while he was commandant of the army in Buenos Aires during the so-called “dirty war” against government opponents.

Suarez Mason, 63, the target of repeated demonstrations by Argentine nationals here, has been held without bail since his arrest in January, 1987, in suburban Foster City. He fled Argentina in December, 1983, when the military gave up control to the civilian government headed by President Raul Alfonsin.

U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen said he will rule on the extradition “as quickly as possible,” perhaps as early as April 6. Jensen must decide whether evidence supplied by Argentina amounts to probable cause that Suarez Mason violated U.S. and Argentine law. Suarez Mason, who faces life imprisonment in Argentina, can appeal if he loses before Jensen.

In Argentina, he is accused of 400 crimes, but the extradition request specifies only 43 murders and 24 kidnapings, plus an allegation that he traveled to the United States on a forged passport.

Suarez Mason commanded the 1st Army Corps in Buenos Aires from the time the military took control of Argentina in 1976 until 1979. In those years, some of the fiercest measures were taken as part of the military junta’s so-called dirty war against suspected leftists. Later he was army chief of staff and finally president of the state-owned petroleum company before fleeing.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Zanides, who represents Argentina, portrayed the general as an integral part of the “illegal institutional repression” during the worst first years of the so-called dirty war.

“It couldn’t have happened by accident. It couldn’t have happened as a result of some rogue elements under his command,” Zanides said of the killings and torture under Suarez Mason’s command.

During Suarez Mason’s command, soldiers kidnaped 5,500 people, dragging many of them from their homes or off the streets, and taking them to any of 24 secret interrogation centers where officers carried out a “systematic pattern of . . . torture and murder of suspected subversives,” Zanides said.

In the first year of Suarez-Mason’s command, at least 1,078 people “disappeared” in the Buenos Aires area; an estimated 12,000 people disappeared during the entire reign of the junta.

Zanides said Suarez Mason had direct control over the army intelligence officers who conducted the interrogations, and signed directives under which subordinates operated, including how to deliver the children of the dead to their nearest relatives, the prosecutor said.

Suarez Mason’s effort to remain here is based on a claim that Argentina’s extradition request is politically motivated. He also claims if there were crimes, he should be tried by military tribunal, not a civilian court.

The retired general, a balding man who was casually dressed in a gray sweater, maintains that at the time his actions were the only proper response to a revolutionary uprising that threatened to turn Argentina into a Marxist power. If there were abuses, he says through his attorneys, he had no knowledge of crimes committed by his underlings.

J.T. Prada, Suarez Mason’s lawyer, said in an interview that while some soldiers “took the law into their own hands,” there is nothing to tie Suarez Mason to the crimes.

“There may be a gut feeling that maybe he knew. But that’s not what we’re talking about. They need something more than a gut feeling. Where’s the evidence?” asked Prada, a Santa Ana lawyer.

The court on Monday was filled with Argentine consular officers, lawyers representing Argentine nationals who have sued Suarez Mason in federal courts here, and a handful of the general’s supporters and family members.

Maximo Gainza, editor and publisher of La Prensa, a conservative Buenos Aires newspaper that backed the junta, charged that Suarez Mason faces a “political circus” of a trial if he is returned to Argentina, and called the proceeding here a “a more refined political circus.”

The general is scheduled to be back in court next week for a hearing in one of three civil suits against him. The suits contend that although the acts occurred in Argentina, the Argentine victims have the right to sue in federal courts here under international human rights law. The cases are pending.