General Must Pay $21 Million in Torture Case

A federal judge Monday ordered a powerful general in Argentina’s deposed military regime to pay $21.17 million in damages to a torture victim of the junta’s so-called “dirty war” against suspected subversives.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti said retired Gen. Carlos Suarez Mason directed an “enterprise of terror,” and ordered him to pay the largest judgment ever in a case of its type to Horacio Martinez-Baca, an Argentine lawyer who was imprisoned without charges and tortured for four years in Buenos Aires-area prisons.

Suarez Mason, 64, commanded the 1st Army Corps in the Buenos Aires region from 1976 to 1979, during the height of the military rule, and at a time when soldiers abducted, imprisoned, tortured and murdered thousands of suspected “subversives.”

‘Direct Supervision’

Conti said that while Suarez Mason did not “personally apply the electric prods” used to torture Martinez-Baca, the lawyer’s interrogators “were acting under defendant’s direct supervision and control.”

“The evidence shows that defendant was aware of all that went on below him,” Conti said in the eight-page ruling dated Friday and released Monday.

Conti directed Suarez Mason to pay $10 million in punitive damages, saying: “Humans must be deterred from inflicting such cruel punishment on fellow humans.”

The judge also ordered him to pay another $11.17 million to compensate Martinez-Baca for loss of income and psychological and physical harm, including a reduced life expectancy.

Whether Martinez-Baca will collect any of the money remains questionable. His lawyers believe Suarez Mason is a millionaire, but the former general claims to be impoverished.

“I feel like $21 million,” Martinez-Baca said Monday after a celebratory lunch with his wife and daughter. “It’s great. I’m very happy.”

Calling the suit “a matter of principle,” Martinez-Baca, 48, who lives in Oakland and is studying to become a lawyer here, said he plans to donate half of any money he collects to other victims of the military government.

“It (the decision) sends a strong message to people like Suarez Mason that they cannot ride roughshod over human rights and live as a retired elder statesman in the United States,” said Joanne Hoeper, of the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster, which helped represent Martinez-Baca.

The ruling comes in one of three civil suits by Argentine nationals who fled their native land during the junta’s rule from 1976 to 1983, and accuse Suarez Mason of violating international human rights law and U.S. precedent.

Perhaps more pressing for the former general is the request by Argentina’s new democratic government that he be extradited on 24 kidnap and 43 murder charges. Another federal judge here has said he will rule on the extradition request Wednesday. Suarez Mason is the highest-ranking official of the military regime yet to be prosecuted and could face life in prison if he is convicted upon his return.

Suarez Mason, arrested last year in his suburban Foster City home, is being held without bail pending extradition and could not be reached for comment. He came to this country on an allegedly forged passport when a civilian government took over in Argentina in 1983.

Suarez Mason claims to have no money, having spent $100,000 on lawyers in his extradition case.

‘Living Quite Well’

Martinez-Baca’s lawyers believe that Suarez Mason bilked Argentina’s treasury after he left the army in 1981 and was president of the state-owned petroleum company.

“He has been living quite well without any visible means of support since he left Argentina in 1983. We have no doubt that he is a millionaire. How many millions he has has yet to be determined,” said David Cole of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, another of Martinez-Baca’s law firms.

In the unusual civil case, Suarez Mason refused to answer questions posed by Martinez-Baca’s attorneys and claimed that he could not afford to hire counsel. Conti, apparently impatient with the former general, ruled last month that Martinez-Baca’s allegations are true, finding that Suarez Mason was in default because he had not formally responded to the suit.

All that was left was to decide how much the general should pay. Martinez-Baca took the witness stand in a hearing last month to present evidence about the damages, dramatically confronting the man who ordered his torture. In the hearing, Conti said Suarez Mason had missed his opportunity to speak, and would not let a lawyer defend Suarez Mason, or let Suarez Mason participate.

In his testimony, Martinez-Baca recounted how he was pulled from his home in 1976. He told of how for the next four years he suffered beatings and shocks from cattle prods and electrodes, and was forced to take 45-minute ice-cold showers and to run in circles until he collapsed.

U.S. courts have allowed a handful of civil suits against foreign nationals who are accused of violating internationally recognized human rights, such as torture and summary execution. But so far, only one other judge has given an award. In that case, one involving a death in Paraguay, the $10 million has not been collected. Other suits are pending against former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Suarez Mason’s attorneys did not return telephone calls from The Times.