Argentine General Says Army Killed Leftists in ‘Dirty War’

The army chief of staff admitted Tuesday night that the military persecuted and killed political opponents during the “dirty war” against leftists and dissidents from 1976 to 1983.

The army “employed illegitimate methods, including the suppression of life, to obtain information” during that period, Gen. Martin Balza said in a statement broadcast on a TV news program.

Balza said the army “did not know how to take on terrorists by legal means.”

It was the first time a high-ranking military official has acknowledged that the army tortured or killed political foes during the era.

The admission came a day after a second former military man confessed to participating in “death flights,” in which political prisoners were thrown alive into the ocean.

On Tuesday, President Carlos Menem’s running mate said the confessions were designed to hurt the president’s bid for a second term in the May 14 election.

“The assassins are only ready to confess 20 or 30 days before the elections,” said Carlos Ruckauf, a former Interior minister.

Menem’s government has been criticized for not doing enough to investigate crimes committed by the military. He granted an amnesty in December, 1990, to most military officers and former terrorists involved in the “dirty war.”

Eager to prevent the atrocities from becoming an electoral issue, Menem has urged military personnel involved to confess privately to priests and not “rub salt in old wounds.”

In a newspaper interview published Monday, former Sgt. Victor Ibanez claimed the “death flights” operated between 1976 and 1978. He was the first member of the Argentine army to speak out on alleged military murder methods.

The account echoed a confession in March by a former navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Adolfo Scilingo. He broke two decades of armed forces silence on the fate of Argentina’s “disappeared” by describing how prisoners were drugged and tossed alive from navy planes.

The military junta that seized power in a 1976 coup went on a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorists. At least 9,000 people, many of them dissidents unconnected with terrorism, were arrested and disappeared, according to an official report.

Some human rights advocates claim more than 30,000 Argentines disappeared under military rule.