Va. lab IDs Argentine 'dirty war' victims by DNA

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Dec 26, 3:12 PM EST
Va. lab IDs Argentine 'dirty war' victims by DNA
By NAFEESA SYEED and VANESSA HAND ORELLANA
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Victoria Avila was 1 when her father went missing, snatched up by agents of Argentina's former military dictatorship in 1977.

Now, Victor Hugo Avila is no longer among the ranks of the disappeared. Thanks to DNA tests conducted at a lab in Lorton, Va., scientists are helping families of the long-lost victims of a defunct junta identify the remains of loved ones - with 42 matches in 2009 alone.

Advances in DNA testing are making it cheaper and faster to identify victims of South American atrocities, raising hopes among their relatives that in the years ahead science will answer painful questions from Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship.

~snip~
Some bodies were buried in hard-to-find mass graves, their skeletons reconstructed from scattered skulls, pelvises and ribs. Others were thrown into the ocean from military planes, and scientists recovered some body parts that washed ashore, according to Mercedes Doretti, founder of the anthropology team.

"A number of people are unretrievable," Doretti said.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_600_NAMELESS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-12-26-14-49-49

[Judi Lynn]

1. Transcript: U.S. OK'd 'Dirty War'

Published on Thursday, December 4, 2003 by the Miami Herald
Transcript: U.S. OK'd 'Dirty War'
New evidence suggests that Henry Kissinger gave the Argentine military 'a green light' in its 1970s-80s campaign against leftists.

by Daniel A. Grech

BUENOS AIRES - At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody ''dirty war'' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that ''we would like you to succeed,'' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.

The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or ''disappearance'' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.

The document is also certain to further complicate Kissinger's legacy, which has been questioned in recent years as new evidence has emerged on his connection to human-rights violations around the world -- including in Chile, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Kissinger and several top deputies have repeatedly denied condoning human-rights abuses in Argentina.

DIPLOMATIC CABLES

Among the 4,667 U.S. documents declassified by the State Department last year were diplomatic cables showing that the Argentine military believed it had Kissinger's approval. The information was requested by the families of the junta's victims and human-rights groups.

A transcript of the 1976 Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting was declassified recently under a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington. The document was made available to The Herald on Wednesday and will be presented at a conference on U.S.-Argentine relations during the dirty war today in Buenos Aires.

''Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed,'' Kissinger reassured Guzzetti in the seven-page transcript, marked SECRET. ``I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the better.''

`DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE'

''This is final, definitive evidence that Kissinger gave a green light to Argentine generals,'' said Carlos Osorio, director of the Argentina Documentation Project at the National Security Archive.

The Argentine military began its war against leftist guerrillas and suspected sympathizers in 1975, before taking power in a coup the following year. By the time of the conversation between Kissinger and Guzzetti, the machinery of murder and disappearances had received worldwide condemnation and the U.S. Congress was considering economic sanctions.

Guzzetti assured Kissinger that the ''struggle'' against ''terrorist organizations'' would be finished by the end of 1976. But a 1983 report by an Argentine truth commission showed that the killings accelerated in late 1976 and continued for two more years.

''This document is a devastating indictment of Kissinger's policy toward Latin America,'' said John Dinges, an assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School and author of The Condor Years, a book on military dictatorships in the Southern Cone due out in February. ``Kissinger actually encourages human-rights violations in full consciousness of what was going on.''

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1204-01.htm

[ck4829]

2. The "disappeared" are reappearing. K&R

[snagglepuss]

3. Argentina was a hellhole. I hope those responsible will rot to death. nt

[formercia]

4. When will our 'Dirty War' come to light?

It's been happening here as well.

[Odin2005]

5. I hope this helps the families get closure for those awful crimes.