A long-awaited trial began on Monday of two former Argentine dictators who allegedly oversaw a systematic plan to steal babies born to political prisoners three decades ago.
Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone are accused in 34 cases of infants who were taken from mothers held in Argentina’s largest clandestine torture and detention centers, the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires and the Campo de Mayo army base northwest of the city.
CLANDESTINE
Also on trial are five military figures and a doctor who attended to the detainees.
The case was opened 14 years ago at the request of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a leading human rights group. It may take up to a year to hear testimony from about 370 witnesses.
Videla, 85, has been sentenced to life in prison, and Bignone, 83, is serving a 25-year term for other crimes committed during the 1976 to 1983 dictatorship, but this is the first trial focused on the alleged plan to steal as many as 400 infants from leftists who were kidnapped, tortured and vanished during the junta’s crackdown on political dissent.
There are 13,000 people on the official list of those killed, although rights groups estimate as many as 30,000 died.
The existence of babies belonging to people who officially no longer existed created a problem for the junta leaders. The indictment alleges they solved it by falsifying paperwork and arranging illegal adoptions by people sympathetic to the military regime.
ENDING IMPUNITY
Some 500 women were known to be pregnant before they disappeared, according to formal complaints from their families or other official witness accounts.
To date, 102 people born to disappeared dissidents have since recovered their true identities with the aid of the Grandmothers, which helped create a national database of DNA evidence to match children with their birth families.
The stolen grandchildren of Estela de Carlotto, co-founder of the Grandmothers and poet Juan Gelman are among the cases cited in this trial.
Ending impunity for human rights violations committed by the dictatorship is a top priority for Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez, whose center-left government includes many people who fought the military regime in one way or another.
After years of preparation following the reversal of amnesties by Argentina’s congress and Supreme Court, more than 20 cases have reached trial.
The defendants did not speak on Monday, but they and their supporters have dismissed the entire process as an act of revenge by the leftist ideologues they defeated decades ago, and they deny there was any plan to steal babies.
Leonardo Fossati’s mother was three months pregnant when she was kidnapped in 1977 and she gave birth to him in police custody before vanishing.
Fossati rediscovered his birth family in 2005 with help from the Grandmothers, and he is a plaintiff in the case.
“This trial is necessary to set things straight,” he said. “For a long time now, they have denied there was a systematic plan to steal babies.”
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