Cleaning Up After Junta’s ‘Dirty War’

It has taken a quarter of a century and the struggle is still far from over. But for Argentines who have yearned for punishment of military dictators who killed thousands of their countrymen, the jailing of dozens of suspects in the past two days has engendered expectations that truth and justice will finally triumph.

President Nestor Kirchner, in office for just two months, has made good on his threat to end a “culture of impunity” for the generals and admirals who waged a campaign of terror against leftists from 1976 to 1983. Human rights groups estimate that the “dirty war” claimed 30,000 lives.

On Friday, Kirchner revoked a ban on extradition of those sought by foreign courts on genocide charges, a day after stunning the military hierarchy by ordering the arrest of 46 suspects wanted by Spain.

Months, if not years, of legal wrangling remain ahead, but the swift moves of the new president heartened the families of junta victims whose suffering has been exacerbated by the knowledge that the perpetrators walked free.

“The news implies the commencement of justice and that our fight for historical memory has not been in vain,” said Aurora Prados de Pisarello, the daughter of a human rights attorney who was kidnapped and tortured to death for challenging the junta.

The junta figure Pisarello holds responsible for her father’s execution was not only at liberty but recently elected to public office. Retired Gen. Antonio Bussi won the mayor’s job in the provincial capital of Tucuman on June 29 and survived a regional court challenge to his moral fitness for office.

Bussi, who was military governor of the northern province during the dictatorship, has been accused of genocide by a Spanish judge who sought the extraditions Kirchner has moved to fulfill. During Bussi’s tenure, 2,000 young leftist guerrillas and other regime opponents disappeared and were presumed killed. Under Spanish law, genocide can be prosecuted in Spain even if the alleged crime was committed in another country.

Though a cloak of silence has covered many details of the regime’s crimes, evidence has emerged over the years to suggest most victims were killed and buried in mass graves or dumped from military cargo planes into the Atlantic Ocean.

The case of Angel Gerardo Pisarello is a rarity, as his bound and abused body has been recovered. It was found in a park 200 miles from his home, where masked soldiers had kidnapped him June 24, 1976. Neither an activist nor a dissident, Pisarello apparently had provoked the ire of the generals by seeking legal inquiries into the disappearance of several leftists from Tucuman.

Kirchner’s lifting of the ban on extradition has not only instilled hope of prosecuting the junta figures but has “notably changed the tone of the discussion” of that phase in Argentine history, said Virginia Duffy, a lawyer who challenged Bussi’s suitability for elected office.

“For human rights organizations like ours, what is happening now is inspirational, as these are concrete deeds,” Duffy said of the arrests. “Until now there had only been expressions of intention by the government, but the president’s revocation of the decree [banning extradition] is something significant and impressive.”

Though the arrest of Bussi has shaken up those in conservative Tucuman province, she said, the move is likely to spur more candid confrontation with the past and eventually help heal Argentina’s social divides.

“National reconciliation cannot be achieved with pardons, amnesties and impunity,” Duffy said.

While Kirchner’s order clearing the way for extradition pleased those who have long campaigned for punishment of the junta, it does not mean that the detained suspects will depart immediately, nor that their trials will be conducted abroad.

The new president and most human rights advocates who have pushed for prosecution of the dirty war suspects have made clear they would prefer to see them tried in Argentine courts. For that to happen, however, the Supreme Court would have to uphold lower court judgments that a 1990 blanket amnesty issued by then-President Carlos Menem is unconstitutional.

Kirchner orchestrated the resignation of the high court’s chief justice in June, but others on the panel continue to block reconsideration of amnesty.

Those driving the quest for justice concede that other legal hurdles must be cleared before any of the detained suspects can be extradited. The judge who issued the arrest warrants for 46 genocide suspects sought by Spain, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, warned Saturday that actual delivery of the detained men would be “a process of several months.”

Faced with a protracted legal standoff, Canicoba Corral ordered the “preventive arrest” on Thursday of the 45 military figures and one civilian named in Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon’s extradition request.

The arrests shocked the military establishment and the nation. One of the suspects, retired naval officer Juan Antonio Azic, attempted suicide after learning he was about to be jailed. He was in critical condition at the Naval Hospital, officials said Saturday.

Among those in custody are former junta figures already tried in absentia in foreign courts, including the alleged death squad leader Alfredo Astiz, known as “the blond angel of death.” He was convicted in France and sentenced to life in prison for the murders of two French nuns.

Jorge Videla, leader of the 1976 military coup that inaugurated the seven-year dictatorship, was already under house arrest when the fresh order was issued. Another top figure in the junta, Emilio Massera, recently suffered a stroke and remained under medical supervision despite the detention order.

Times staff writer Williams reported from Miami and special correspondent D’Alessandro from Buenos Aires.