Two bishops in Argentina have strongly criticised a decision by the Government to reverse laws which have prevented retired army officers from facing criminal prosecution abroad. At least 40 retired Argentine officers accused of human rights abuses under the military junta of 1976-83 are currently in custody in Argentina. They face the possibility of trials in Europe after its new President, Néstor Kirchner, revoked a government edict prohibiting officers from being extradited to foreign countries to face criminal charges. The decision to scrap two key laws enacted soon after the military regime fell was approved by the lower house of Congress shortly before mdinight on Tuesday. As Congress declared the laws annulled, a crowd of supporters gathered outside the building erupted in applause.
Kirchner’s action came a day after a federal judge in Buenos Aires ordered the detention of 45 retired army officers in response to a Spanish Government request for their extradition, Sergio Rubín reports from Buenos Aires. The officers are accused of human rights abuses committed against Spanish citizens during the brutal clampdown on left-wing guerrillas and their sympathisers between 1976 and 1982, when up to 30,000 people "disappeared" in clandestine detention centres. Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who has issued the extradition request, was responsible for the arrest of the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in London in 1998.
Sources close to the Bishop to the Armed Forces in Buenos Aires, Antonio Baseotto, told The Tablet that if the Government acceded to the judge’s request, the number of those extradited would not be limited to the 46 Judge Garzón had asked for, but would reach "hundreds and hundreds of soldiers". A similar objection has been made by the Archbishop of La Plata, Héctor Aguer. The bishops argue that extradition would undermine the process of national reconciliation and place unnecessary obstacles in the path of the Government’s efforts to overcome Argentina’s severe economic and social crisis.
The actions of both the President and the federal judge signal what could be a major development in international law. As in Chile and other Latin American countries once ruled by dictators, previous governments in Argentina have argued that under the principle of territoriality only Argentine courts have the authority to try Argentine officials charged with abuses in their own country. That principle was sorely tested by the detention of Pinochet in London, and may be again now. But the legal situation remains murky. Spain’s public prosecutor, Pedro Rubira, has disagreed with Baltasar Garzón, saying that the 40 officers do not, after all, fall under Spanish jurisdiction.
The officers currently facing extradition include the two principal leaders of the 1976 coup, Jorge Rafael Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera, who are both 77. In 1985 they were among nine members of the military junta tried by an Argentine court and found guilty of human rights violations ranging from kidnapping to murder. They were sentenced to prison but later pardoned, along with left-wing guerrillas, by President Carlos Menem in 1990. President Kirchner, a 53-year-old Peronist who was detained briefly during the dictatorship, opposes the pardons. He argues that the immunity laws of 1986 and 1987 were passed by President Raúl Alfonsín in order to avert a coup and are unconstitutional.
Argentina’s bishops, frequently accused of turning a blind eye to human rights violations in the Seventies, have been divided over whether to oppose the various amnesty laws. Some members of the bishops’ conference have argued that reconciliation depends on justice, others that Argentina must move on from that bloody chapter in its recent history.
An Argentine priest accused of human rights abuses during the country’s military regime was arrested last week after he refused to testify in court. Fr Christian von Wernich, chaplain to the Buenos Aires police force during the 1970s-80s, is accused of taking part in the torture of opposition figures. He has long been considered by human rights activists as the most notorious example of priests who collaborated with the military dictatorship