Argentina tries doctors for 'baby theft' during military rule
Source: BBC News
17 September 2014 Last updated at 21:06 ET
Argentina tries doctors for 'baby theft' during military rule
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Mothers of "disappeared" children protest in Argentina in this 1977 photo[/font]
Two doctors and a midwife have gone on trial in Argentina charged with kidnapping babies born in captivity to left-wing political prisoners during the 1976-83 military government.
It is the first case of medical staff being tried for allegedly falsifying the babies' birth certificates.
An estimated 500 children were stolen at birth from their mothers during what was known as the Dirty War.
They were then given illegally to other families who raised them as their own.
The real parents were either killed or disappeared.
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29248974
New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina's Dirty War
—By David Corn
| Tue Jan. 14, 2014 4:23 PM EST
Only a few months ago, Henry Kissinger was dancing with Stephen Colbert in a funny bit on the latter's Comedy Central show. But for years, the former secretary of state has sidestepped judgment for his complicity in horrific human rights abuses abroad, and a new memo has emerged that provides clear evidence that in 1976 Kissinger gave Argentina's neo-fascist military junta the "green light" for the dirty war it was conducting against civilian and militant leftists that resulted in the disappearance—that is, deaths—of an estimated 30,000 people.
In April 1977, Patt Derian, a onetime civil rights activist whom President Jimmy Carter had recently appointed assistant secretary of state for human rights, met with the US ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill. A memo recording that conversation has been unearthed by Martin Edwin Andersen, who in 1987 first reported that Kissinger had told the Argentine generals to proceed with their terror campaign against leftists (whom the junta routinely referred to as "terrorists"
. The memo notes that Hill told Derian about a meeting Kissinger held with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti the previous June. What the two men discussed was revealed in 2004 when the National Security Archive obtained and released the secret memorandum of conversation for that get-together. Guzzetti, according to that document, told Kissinger, "our main problem in Argentina is terrorism." Kissinger replied, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures." In other words, go ahead with your killing crusade against the leftists.
The new document shows that Kissinger was even more explicit in encouraging the Argentine junta. The memo recounts Hill describing the Kissinger-Guzzetti discussion this way:
The Argentines were very worried that Kissinger would lecture to them on human rights. Guzzetti and Kissinger had a very long breakfast but the Secretary did not raise the subject. Finally Guzzetti did. Kissinger asked how long will it take you (the Argentines) to clean up the problem. Guzzetti replied that it would be done by the end of the year. Kissinger approved.
In other words, Ambassador Hill explained, Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light.
More:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/new-memo-kissinger-gave-green-light-argentina-dirty-war
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