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REPORTS: ARGENTINA |
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Adios
to Decree Against Extraditions
Viviana
Alonso
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - The Argentine
government is poised to repeal a
decree that impedes the extradition of
members of the military accused of
crimes committed during the country's
last military dictatorship
(1976-1983), and sought by justice
authorities in France, Germany, Italy,
Spain and Sweden.
If the decree is annulled, the
extradition requests that are
currently being rejected out of hand
would be passed on to the appropriate
courts to be considered on a
case-by-case basis, says deputy
minister of justice, Abel Fleitas
Ortiz de Rozas.
President Néstor Kirchner said this
week that Argentina is in the process
of recovering justice and memory 20
years after the dictatorship.
His statement came in response to
queries as to how Argentina would
handle the petition filed Tuesday by
Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón for the
extradition of 46 retired members of
the Argentine military who
participated in the dictatorship's
illegal repression that claimed the
lives of as many as 30,000 people.
Officials in the Kirchner
administration had already suggested
the possibility of a repeal of the
decree against extraditions, which was
enacted by former president Fernando
de la Rúa (1999-2001).
But the government has not set a date
for doing so, and continues to review
different projects for settling the
matter.
Judge Garzón's latest petition, the
fourth since 1999, puts pressure on
Buenos Aires and could complicate the
European tour that Kirchner began
Friday, taking him to London, Paris,
Brussels and Madrid.
In Spain, Kirchner will meet with King
Juan Carlos and with Prime Minister
José María Aznar, and it is likely
that in their conversations the issue
of the Spaniards who disappeared
during the Argentine dictatorship will
come up.
The search for justice in those cases,
known as the ”Madrid Trial”, is
underway, but the previous governments
of Argentina have not been very
cooperative.
Garzón, who rose to international
fame for his failed attempt to
extradite former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet for crimes against
humanity, requested a preventive
embargo on the holdings of 96 former
military and police agents.
The nearly 3.0 billion dollars could
be used in part as reparations to the
families of the Spanish victims of the
Argentine dictatorship.
”The repeal of decree 1581, which De
la Rúa signed in December 2001, is
one of the things that we asked of
President Kirchner,” Graciela
Rosemblum, a leader of the Argentine
League for the Rights of Man (LADH),
told IPS.
That request, made public Jun. 3, was
backed by numerous Argentine human
rights groups, including the
Ecumenical Movement, the Peace and
Justice Service (SERPAJ), Permanent
Assembly on Human Rights (APDH),
Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS),
Families of the Detained-Disappeared,
and the Grandmothers and Mothers of
Plaza de Mayo.
These groups also called for the
annulment of the laws -- known as
”full stop” and ”due
obedience” -- that gave impunity to
the armed forces involved in human
rights abuses during the dictatorship.
The matter is now in the hands of the
Supreme Court after several lower
court judges issued rulings declaring
the two laws unconstitutional.
Decree 1581, which De la Rúa signed
just two weeks before social upheaval
prompted him to resign in December
2001, establishes that the Ministry of
Foreign Relations ”will reject
requests for extradition involving
events occurred in (Argentina's)
national territory or places subject
to national jurisdiction.”
In addition to Spain's extradition
requests are those expected to be
issued by the courts of Italy,
Germany, France and Sweden -- a
situation that could trigger a flood
of extraditions if the Argentine
decree is indeed annulled.
”Germany certainly will demand
compliance with the extradition of the
three men it has requested: former
generals Guillermo Suárez Mason and
Juan Bautista Sasiain, and former
colonel Pedro Durán Sáenz,” says
Esteban Cuyá, of the Coalition
Against Impunity in Argentina,
comprising 15 German non-governmental
organisations.
A court in the German city of
Nuremberg ”spent five years
investigating the criminal
responsibility of the individuals
accused of kidnapping, torturing and
killing German sociologist Elisabeth Käsemann
in May 1977,” Cuyá told IPS.
Käsemann, who was 30 at the time she
was assassinated, had spent two months
in one of the dictatorship's
clandestine detention centres. Her
parents were finally able to recover
her body after a scandalous
negotiation in which military
officials demanded money in exchange.
German justice authorities also
requested cooperation in order to
question former army commander and
dictator Jorge Videla as well as other
military officers about the
disappearance of 96 German citizens,
but were rebuffed with the argument of
”sovereignty of the Argentine
judicial authority,” said the
activist.
”The German government, through its
attorney in Buenos Aires, Alberto Luis
Zuppi, has brought its complaint
before the Argentine Supreme Court,
which is to decide on the matter,”
he added.
Meanwhile, new extraditions requests
are also expected from judges in
France and Sweden for former captain
of the Argentine navy Alfredo Astiz.
Sweden has sought extradition of Astiz
for the assassination of Dagmar
Hagelin, daughter of a Swedish
citizen, who was 17 when the captain
detained her on Jan. 27, 1977, after
shooting her in the back.
French justice has also repeatedly
called for the extradition of Astiz,
known as the ”angel of death”
because of his innocent-looking face,
for the kidnap of Catholic nuns Leonie
Duquet and Alice Domon.
In 1977, using the name Gustavo Niño,
Astiz infiltrated a group of relatives
of the disappeared that used to meet
assisted by the French nuns.
The treachery of Astiz, now 53, cost
12 people their lives, including one
of the founders of the Mothers of
Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Villaflor.
The first trial in a foreign court for
human rights violations occurred
during Argentina's dictatorship began
Jan. 7, 1983, in Italy, when that
country's Ministry of Justice ordered
legal proceedings on the disappearance
of Italian citizens, based on
information collected and sent by the
consuls in Argentina.
A week later, the Italian consulate in
Buenos Aires filed collective habeas
corpus for 45 Italians and denounced
the disappearance of another 617
Italian citizens in Argentina.
A large portion of the Argentine
population is of Spanish or Italian
extraction, and many hold dual
citizenship. In the case of those who
were disappeared or murdered by agents
of the dictatorship, this gives the
courts in Spain or Italy jurisdiction
to seek justice for their deaths.
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