Officers’ Bid to Seize Argentine Army Jail Fails

Army officers demanding amnesty for imprisoned former military junta members seized part of a strategic base outside Buenos Aires today and attempted to storm the prison where the former officials are held.

The government said that dissident officers took control of the infantry school at the Campo de Mayo military base today in the third such rebellion against the government of President Raul Alfonsin since April, 1987.

Officials said loyalist troops were being sent to the school to quell the rebellion but no fighting was immediately reported.

Rebellious officers later attempted to seize the Magdalena military prison 60 miles south of Buenos Aires, where the five former junta members and the leader of two previous rebellions are jailed, but the attack was repulsed by the frontier police who run the facility, the Defense Ministry and local officials said.

Among the inmates at the prison are ex-presidents Jorge Videla and Roberto Viola and three other former junta members convicted of planning the disappearances of thousands who were tortured and killed while political prisoners. Also jailed there is Lt. Col. Aldo Rico, who led two previous revolts.

Demands Reported

The officers involved in the latest rebellion are demanding “the recuperation of the honor and historic role of the army,” according to a proclamation read to United Press International by a rebel spokesman, a lieutenant colonel, reached by telephone at the base.

The rebel spokesman said the mutineers responded to the orders of rightist Col. Mohamed Ali Seineldin, the Argentine military attache to Panama, who in recent days returned to Buenos Aires. He was seen by reporters at the base today but he has refused to make public statements.

Witnesses reported the rebels were digging trenches at the base, smearing their faces with camouflage paint, and deploying tanks.

A Defense Ministry statement confirmed that the infantry school had fallen into rebel hands and said that “with the purpose of annulling the delinquent actions taken by a group installed in the infantry school, the necessary deployment of troops to that institute has begun.”