Dirty war officer on trial for genocide

[Judi Lynn]

Dirty war officer on trial for genocide
14/01/2005 - 12:36:10

A former Argentinian navy officer went on trial in Madrid today on charges of genocide, torture and terrorism committed during his country’s “dirty war” more than two decades ago.

He is the first person tried in Spain for crimes against humanity committed in another nation.

Adolfo Scilingo,, 58, who has been on a hunger strike since mid-December, arrived at the National Court in an ambulance and suffered a dizzy spell in a holding cell, delaying the start of proceedings.

Scilingo voluntarily went to Spain in 1997 to testify before Judge Baltasar Garzon, who since the late 1990s has spearheaded a probe into human rights violations by military regimes in Argentina and Chile.

He confessed then to throwing 30 drugged, naked dissidents from planes into the Atlantic but has since recanted.
(snip/...)

http://212.2.162.45/news/story.asp?j=130411614&p=y3x4yz3zx&n=130412374

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Adolfo Scilingo

The Testimony of
Former Navy Sergeant Victor Ibanez

The Scilingo full story from TIME magazine

Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 17:33:15 GMT,


BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- A second former military man has admitted taking part in ``death flights'' in which political prisoners were thrown alive into the Atlantic in the 1970s.

The former military regime held at least 2,000 prisoners at Campo de Mayo army base in Buenos Aires during the ``Dirty War,'' and many were thrown into the ocean after interrogation, said former army Sgt. Victor Ibanez.

``At times there were 20 prisoners, even 300,'' he said in an interview published Monday in the newspaper La Prensa. ``When there were too many'' the prisoners were placed aboard army cargo planes and helicopters and flown out to sea.

``We flew at very low altitude and the flights were never registered,'' Ibanez said. ``Prisoners were injected with a very strong drug, they were brought over to the door and two officers threw them out.''


Adolfo Scilingo
Two months ago, retired Navy Capt. Adolfo Scilingo broke two decades of armed forces silence by saying that prisoners were stripped, drugged and thrown into the Atlantic from navy aircraft between 1976 and 1978.

At least 9,000 people disappeared during the military government's campaign against leftists and dissidents between 1976 and 1983. Human rights groups put the figure at nearer 30,000.

President Carlos Menem has urged participants in the repression not to make public confessions to avoid ``rubbing salt in old wounds.''
(snip/...)

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/junta/ibanez.html

(Ex-President Carlos Menem is a personal friend of George H. W. Bush, and he tried his best to suppresss growing awareness of the "dirty war.")

[struggle4progress]

1. Yippie!

[Judi Lynn]

2. This guy's a real piece of work

He's having a hard time in his later years in adjusting to the karma he fears is just around the corner, waiting for him. He's tried to manipulate events, and failed, as this article illustrates:

Genocide trial shines spotlight on 'dirty war'

Ben Sills in Madrid
Saturday January 15, 2005
The Guardian

A former Argentinian army officer, accused of throwing political prisoners to their death from military planes, appeared in a Spanish court yesterday in the country's first-ever genocide trial.
Adolfo Scilingo, 58, who is facing charges relating to his role in Argentina's dirty war when thousands of left-wing activists disappeared, had to be helped into the dock of Madrid's high court after hunger strike had left him severely weakened.
(snip)

Yesterday Jaime Sanz de Bremond, a prosecution lawyer representing the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a victims' group, said: "It was an ideological extermination. The military junta planned to suppress all those opposed to their western, Christian model."
(snip)

Once a week 15 or 20 prisoners from the school were drugged, flown out over the ocean and then pushed to their deaths.
(snip)

Roberto Libedinsky's daughter Susana disappeared during the war. "I can't tell you what happened to her," he said. "Eleven soldiers came and took her in the middle of the night like Nazis. They said they had to investigate her."

"She was opposed to the regime," he added. "But she never took up arms."
(snip)

"They were unconscious," he said. "We took their clothes off and when the commander of the flight gave the order we opened the door and pushed them out, naked, one by one."

After the book came out Mr Scilingo suffered harassment in Argentina, including letter bombs and threats. So in 1997 he brought his story to Spain.

His initial testimony matched the account in the book. But after he was remanded in Madrid's Carabanchel prison, Mr Scilingo's story changed. "He thought he was going to nail his superiors," said one observer. "Then he realised he was going to get nailed himself."
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,2763,1390877,00.html

Aping one of his spiritual brethren, Augusto Pinochet, this one has gone on a hunger strike, and is hamming it up in his trial, trying to suggest he's close to the verge of death itself.

"His attitude is entirely voluntary," said the doctor. "He knows what he is doing."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Married to the Man Who Talked

First Page - by Joe Goldman - Buenos Aires - 16 March 1997

They are, in so many ways, the typical Argentine middle-class family.
Paz, 22, is studying interior design in a private school.
Pilar, 21, works part-time in advertising.
Asunción, 18, wants to be an actress.
Manuel, 16, dreams of living in the United States.
Their mother Marcela, 47, is co-owner of a small company which sells and distributes videocassettes with religious themes.

But their lives changed drastically in March 1995 when the head of the family, Adolfo Scilingo, became the first Argentine military officer to blow the whistle on the scores of death flights undertaken in the years 1976/1983. Scilingo, a Navy Captain during the so-called Dirty War, admitted he was on two flights where 30 prisoners were drugged, undressed and hurled off the plane into the waters of the South Atlantic.
(snip)

“I’m really proud that he admitted the death flights, because we could see it was ruining him,” said daughter Asunción, who remembers her father’s tremendous bouts with alcoholism and how he sat at the dinner table without saying a word to anybody. “We gradually learned what the problem was as our mother began telling us about the situation.”
(snip)

“When we first began discussing what he went through, he gave very few details but over the years he talked about witnessing young prisoners, even pregnant women, in chains in cells not fit for animals. Then came the details about the flight, the descriptions of all the people who were drugged and thrown from the plane. It was a shock for all of us.”
(snip)http://ukinet.com/media/text/scilingo.htm

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How many Americans are unaware that Argentinian officers took the babies of accused "leftists" prisoners after they were born in prison, and distributed them to the families of other officers and their friends? How many Americans don't know that there are people in Argentina trying to find out where their tiny relatives were sent, or if they were also destroyed with the mothers?



Younger Sciling during his "glory days"

[UpInArms]

3. The Disappeareds

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB73/index3.htm

Washington, D.C., 21 August 2002 - State Department documents released yesterday on Argentina's dirty war (1976-83) show that the Argentine military believed it had U.S. approval for its all-out assault on the left in the name of fighting terrorism. The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires complained to Washington that the Argentine officers were "euphoric" over signals from high-ranking U.S. officials including then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The Embassy reported to Washington that after Mr. Kissinger's 10 June 1976 meeting with Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Guzzetti, the Argentine government dismissed the Embassy's human rights approaches and referred to Kissinger's "understanding" of the situation. The current State Department collection does not include a minute of Kissinger's and Guzetti's conversation in Santiago, Chile.

On 20 September 1976, Ambassador Robert Hill reported that Guzzetti said "When he had seen SECY of State Kissinger in Santiago, the latter had said he 'hoped the Argentine Govt could get the terrorist problem under control as quickly as possible.' Guzzetti said that he had reported this to President Videla and to the cabinet, and that their impression had been that the USG's overriding concern was not human rights but rather that GOA 'get it over quickly'."

After a second meeting between Kissinger and Guzzetti in Washington, on 19 October 1976, Ambassador Robert Hill wrote "a sour note" from Buenos Aires complaining that he could hardly carry human rights demarches if the Argentine Foreign Minister did not hear the same message from the Secretary of State. "Guzzetti went to U.S. fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings on his government's human rights practices, rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem with the USG over that issue," wrote Hill.

...more...

[Judi Lynn]

4. According to your link, Jimmy Carter made a difference!

It was great seeing this:

As Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency, the Department of State informed the U.S. Embassy in Argentina of the points that were raised with Political Counselor Beauge at the Argentine Embassy in Washington. The Department told Beauge that the new administration attaches tremendous importance to human rights. Beauge remarked that "it is essential for your same message to come from all channels. This did not happen in the past."
(snip)

Right-wing loudmouths have been making fun of Jimmy Carter's Presidency since he was inaugurated, yet time after time, when you are really looking beyond the deceptive view of him we've been fed, you run into far different values, far HIGHER values from our Democratic President than the ones of his Republican counterparts.