Argentina convicts 2 dictators of stealing babies

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Fri, Jul. 06, 2012 12:39 AM
Argentina convicts 2 dictators of stealing babies
By MICHAEL WARREN
Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- The conviction of two former dictators for the systematic stealing of babies from political prisoners 30 years ago is a big step in Argentina's effort to punish that era's human rights abuses, though certainly not the last.

Following Thursday's convictions of Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, at least 17 other major cases are before judges or are nearing trial.

Among them is a "mega-trial" involving the Navy Mechanics School, which became a feared torture center as the 1976-1983 military junta kidnapped and killed 13,000 opponents while trying to annihilate an armed leftist uprising. That case involves 65 defendants, nearly 900 victims, more than 100 witnesses and about 60,000 pages of evidence.

~snip~
Witnesses during the trial included former U.S. diplomat Elliot Abrams. He was called to testify after a long-classified memo describing his secret meeting with Argentina's ambassador was made public at the request of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group whose evidence-gathering efforts were key to the prosecution.

More: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/05/3692012/ex-argentine-dictator-convicted.html#storylink=cpy

[Judi Lynn]

1. Ex-dictator Jorge Rafael Videla pays for lives he stole

Ex-dictator Jorge Rafael Videla pays for lives he stole
By DEBORA REY
Published on Saturday 7 July 2012 00:00

Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for a systematic programme to steal babies from prisoners who were kidnapped, tortured and murdered during the military junta’s war on leftist dissidents three decades ago.

Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, was also convicted on Thursday and sentenced to 15 years. Both were in prison for other human rights abuses.

“This is an historic day. Today legal justice has been made real – never again the justice of one’s own hands, which the repressors were known for,” prominent rights activist Tati Almeida said outside the courthouse, where a crowd watched on a big screen and cheered each sentence.

~snip~

Prosecutors had asked for 50 years for Videla and four others. He and Bignone, 84, already have life sentences for other crimes against humanity, and are serving time in prison despite an Argentine law that usually permits criminals over 70 to stay at home.

More:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/ex-dictator-jorge-rafael-videla-pays-for-lives-he-stole-1-2397665

[Judi Lynn]

2. Did Reagan Know about Baby Thefts?

Did Reagan Know about Baby Thefts?
July 6, 2012

Exclusive: Many Americans adore President Reagan for lifting their spirits after the discouraging 1970s. Yet, in secret, he collaborated with some of the Western Hemisphere’s most brutal neo-Nazis, including Argentine generals just convicted in a grotesque baby harvesting scheme, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

An Argentine court has convicted two of the nation’s former right-wing dictators, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, in a scheme to murder leftist mothers and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings, a shocking process known to the Reagan administration even as it worked closely with the bloody regime. Testimony at the trial included a videoconference from Washington with Elliott Abrams, then-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who said he urged Bignone to reveal the babies’ identities as Argentina began a transition to democracy in 1983.

Abrams said the Reagan administration “knew that it wasn’t just one or two children,” indicating that U.S. officials believed there was a high-level “plan because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed.” Estimates of the Argentines murdered in the so-called Dirty War range from 13,000 to about 30,000, with many victims “disappeared,” buried in mass graves or dumped from planes over the Atlantic.

A human rights group, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, says as many as 500 babies were stolen by the military during the repression from 1976 to 1983. Some of the pregnant mothers were kept alive long enough to give birth and then were chained together with other prisoners and pushed out of the planes into the ocean to drown.

Despite U.S. government awareness of the grisly actions of the Argentine junta, which had drawn public condemnation from the Carter administration in the 1970s, these Argentine neo-Nazis were warmly supported by Ronald Reagan, both as a political commentator in the late 1970s and as President once he took office in 1981.

More:
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/07/06/did-reagan-know-about-baby-thefts/

[Judi Lynn]

3. More you really should know about the dictatorship, from this article:

~snip~
After becoming President in January 1981, Reagan entered into a covert alliance with the Argentine junta. He ordered the CIA to collaborate with Dirty War experts in training the Contras, who were soon rampaging through towns in northern Nicaragua, raping women and dragging local officials into public squares for executions. (See Robert Parry’s Lost History.)

A Happy Face

Yet, Reagan kept up a happy face, hailing the Contras as the “moral equals of the Founding Fathers” and heaping gratitude on the Argentine junta.

~snip~
According to government investigations, the military’s intelligence officers also advanced Nazi-like methods of torture by testing the limits of how much pain a human being could endure before dying. The torture methods included experiments with electric shocks, drowning, asphyxiation and sexual perversions, such as forcing mice into a woman’s vagina. Some of the implicated military officers had trained at the U.S.-run School of the Americas.

The Argentine tactics were emulated throughout Latin America. According to a Guatemalan truth commission, the right-wing military there also adopted the practice of taking suspected subversives on death flights, although over the Pacific Ocean.

Spaghetti Monster surely knows we have to learn this stuff the hard way, by searching for it, as it never gets through our corporate media news block.

[Judi Lynn]

4. No mercy in Argentine 'stolen babies' case: rights leader

No mercy in Argentine 'stolen babies' case: rights leader
Monday, 09 July 2012 00:53

~snip~
The maternity ward was on the second floor, where there was a hallway leading to the torture rooms that the executioners cruelly dubbed "The Avenue of Happiness."

The inmates gave birth while shackled and hooded and very few were ever allowed even to see the faces of their babies, according to survivor testimony.

In most cases, the baby was given to a soldier or the friend of a soldier, while the mother was later thrown from a military plane into the sea, naked and still alive.

Human rights advocates say some 30,000 Argentines "disappeared" during the military regime's so-called "dirty war" against leftists and leftist sympathizers.

http://www.brecorder.com/world/south-america/66428-no-mercy-in-argentine-stolen-babies-case-rights-leader-.html

[brovibes]

5. :(

[Judi Lynn]

6. Argentina: Paying for the sins of the past

Argentina: Paying for the sins of the past
What can Latin American countries learn from Argentina's punitive approach?
Inside Story Americas Last Modified: 07 Jul 2012 12:40

- video -

"Truth is like opening a Pandora's box in Latin America. And once you have the truth you have power to move towards justice."

- Peter Kronbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive

~snip~
There is also the question of the US's key role in supporting a continent wide campaign of political repression and terror, but should American politicians and officials be formally held to account for their actions?

~snip~
LATIN AMERICA - DEALING WITH THE PAST:
•Two former Argentine dictators were convicted of stealing babies from political prisoners
•A court in Buenos Aires sentenced Jorge Videla to 50 years in prison and Reynaldo Bignone to 15 years
•They are already serving jail sentences for crimes committed under military rule, between 1976 and 1983
•At least 400 babies are thought to have been taken from their parents while they were held in detention centres
•Thousands of people disappeared in Argentina between 1976 and 1983
•Human rights abuses in Guatemala killed hundreds of thousands after President Arbenz was deposed in 1954
•A 1964 coup in Brazil ushered in two decades of military rule
•The military junta in Brazil created Latin America's first death squads
•Bolivian doctator Hugo Banzer accused of human rights abuses
•Chile's Salvador Allende was deposed and replaced by Augusto Pinochet
•The Pinochet government is said to have tortured and murdered thousands of left-leaning Chileans
•The civil war in El Salvador left some 63,000 people dead
•Nicaragua's government fought CIA-backed fighters in the 1980's

More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/07/201277102924893557.html

[ocpagu]

7. Nice compilation.

Thanks, Judi.

Great to know some justice is being made, at least.