Argentina close to verdict on junta's alleged theft of death-camp babies

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Argentina close to verdict on junta's alleged theft of death-camp babies

Dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone face long sentences for alleged plot over political captives' children

Uki Goni, in Buenos Aires
The Guardian, Wednesday 4 July 2012

After 12 years and hundreds of hours of testimony an Argentine court is finally poised to pass judgment on former dictators accused of orchestrating the "theft" of hundreds of babies born to political prisoners in the 1970s.

Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, dictators who led the bloody military junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, face long sentences for allegedly masterminding what prosecutors hope to prove was a predetermined plan to "rescue" new-born babies from their "terrorist" mothers.

After the mothers were killed the babies were handed over to be raised by military families according to the "western and Christian" values that the generals claimed to defend.

Some lower ranking officers have already been convicted for taking the babies. This trial is set to decide whether the crimes were part of a systematic plan ordered from above.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/argentina-trial-junta-theft-babies

[bloomington-lib]

1. I wish more light would shine on this dark period in history

The Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra Sucia) was a period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists and militants, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas[1] and alleged sympathizers.[2] Some 10,000 of the disappeared were guerrillas of the Montoneros (MPM), and the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP).[3][4][5]

Estimates for the number of people who were killed or "disappeared" range from 9,089 to over 30,000;[6][7] the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons estimates that around 13,000 disappeared.[8] However, these figures must be considered inadequate as declassified documents and internal reporting by Argentine military intelligence itself confirm at least 22,000 killed or "disappeared" between late-1975 (several months prior to the March 1976 coup) and mid-July 1978, which is incomplete as it excludes killings and "disappearances" that occurred after July of 1978.[9]

The exact chronology of the repression is still debated, however, as trade unionists were targeted for assassination as early as 1973, and individual cases of state-sponsored terrorism against Peronism and the left can be traced back at least to the Bombing of Plaza de Mayo in 1955. The Trelew massacre of 1972, the actions of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance since 1973 and Isabel Martínez de Perón's "annihilation decrees" against left-wing guerrillas during Operativo Independencia in 1975, have all been suggested as dates for the beginning of the Dirty War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War