3 convicted of switching child's identity in landmark Argentine 'dirty war' trial

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

3 convicted of switching child's identity in landmark Argentine 'dirty war' trial
JEANNETTE NEUMANN, Associated Press Writer

April 4, 2008 6:32 PM

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - A court on Friday sentenced the adoptive parents of a baby born to a missing political prisoner to up to eight years in prison for concealing the child's identity, in a landmark case with roots in Argentina's dictatorship.

The court also handed down a sentence of 10 years to a former army captain accused of giving the couple the baby after the real parents were abducted by state security forces during the 1976-1983 military regime and never reappeared.

The case marked the first time a child of a dissident who disappeared during Argentina's ''dirty war'' had taken her adoptive parents to court. Human rights groups say more than 200 such children were taken from abducted mothers and given to military or politically connected families to raise. DNA tests have allowed some of them to identify their real parents.
(snip)

Berthier's lawyer, Alejandro Maria Macedo Rumi, said during the trial there was no proof that Sampallo's parents were missing or disappeared. He added that the evidence against Berthier was given by ''former terrorists'' who had participated in leftist militant groups.
(snip)

In 2001, Sampallo's mother was six months pregnant when she and her father were abducted on Dec. 6, 1977, said Sampallo's lawyer. He said Sampallo was born in February 1978, while her mother was being held at a clandestine torture center.




Read more: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=565274892501909659

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The daughter, taken from murdered, torturered dissident parents, Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan



Mirta Barragan, the child's real mother is facing the camera, in the white dress.

Here's a feature story on the victims you may want to read:

From The TimesNovember 28, 2007

The orphan files
What happens when you find out that the people you thought were your family helped to kill your real parents? In Buenos Aires, the orphans of the disappeared tell their stories

Thomas Catan
For 27 years Victoria Donda believed that her name was AnalÍa, that she was born on a patch of wasteland in Buenos Aires and brought up by two loving parents. Three years ago she was told the awful truth: she was born in a secret torture centre run by the brutal junta that governed Argentina for seven years, she was ripped from her mother’s arms when she was 15 days old, and – most heartbreaking of all – the people she thought were her family were part of a regime responsible for the political abduction and murder of her real parents.

The truth was hard to take. “It was very hard, really horrible,” Victoria says. “Imagine if someone told you right now that your parents are not your parents.” She has a complex relationship with the couple who brought her up, a naval officer and his wife, whom she now calls her “appropriators”. The woman came from a poor background and was illiterate: “I taught her to read. She thought she was doing the right thing.” But she finds it difficult to talk about her “father” and refuses to mention his name. Juan Anto-nio Azic shot himself in the head in 2003 as he was about to be charged with child abduction and torturing prisoners. He survived, emerged from a coma and is now in a secure psychiatric unit awaiting trial.

“I’m his daughter: society can’t ask me to judge him,” Victoria says. “They raised me with love, and I love him still. He was responsible and he is in prison and I go to see him. He knows I think he needs to be under arrest. But I think love is not tied to whether you were responsible politically or not. Love works in a different way. If your child ends up being a serial killer, you don’t stop loving him. He will be imprisoned but you will keep on loving him. It’s the same thing.”

Victoria’s case is tragic, but it is far from unique. Between 1976 and 1983, human rights organisations estimate that between 10,000 and 30,000 people disappeared during the Dirty War, the junta’s attempt to “cleanse” Argentina of left-wing opponents. They won’t be coming back: witnesses from that time tell how prisoners were injected with paralysing drugs, stripped naked, crammed on to planes and dropped into the Rio de la Plata, so wide that you cannot see from one shore to the other. But what of their children – either abducted with their parents, or, like Victoria, born in one of those hell-hole detention centres?

More:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2955564.ece

[aquart]

1. Victoria is a wise young woman.

[struggle4progress]

6. !

[MADem]

2. I saw a film on this topic awhile ago. It was quite good; entitled La Historia Oficial.

It was in Spanish; well acted, too. If anyone is interested in the subject matter and likes foreign films, I'd give that one a :thumbsup: ...

[AlphaCentauri]

3. wonder why those RW elites want to keep the children of the people they hate

that may be the way they show their compassion by killing the parents and keeping the children or they know they killed a smart person and want to have a smart kid or they want to redeem their sins, who knows.

[Judi Lynn]

4. You're so right. It would be inevitable there would be such a hideous secret to be kept by the

new parents it would have to destroy any relationship with the child: guilt, unsurmountable guilt.

Looks as this young woman was treated miserably from the first, with her father throwing her helplessness in her face regularly, informing her if it weren't for him she'd be far, far worse off. What he left out was that if it weren't for the regime he supported she would have been living with her own parents.

In some of these cases the new parent(s) was directly involved in torture/murder of the first set of parents.

Unbelievable.

Even the grandparents' of the missing children, (parents of the political murder victims) organization was infiltrated by government agents who then located the ones they felt were the leaders, and these ladies, including a pair of sibling French nuns, were tortured and murdered.

[mitchtv]

5. I remember those mothers(grandmothers)

Standing in the Plaza de Mayo,with pictures of their families daily, demanding their childen back. It went on for years. If it weren't for their courage and bravery, Argentina would have gone on for years longer like Chile. They are largely responsible for the fall of the various juntas that controlled the government for so long as it was.

[AlphaCentauri]

7. the juntas as instrument of the RW have cos more human misery in latin america than any other type

of government