ARGENTINA: Victims of Argentine dictatorship react as deathflights trial gets underway

Record ID: 193847

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Victims of Argentine dictatorship react as deathflights trial gets underway
  • Date: 28th November 2012
  • Summary: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (NOVEMBER 28, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF THE EXTERIOR OF FEDERAL COURT HOUSE FAMILY MEMBERS OF DISAPPEARED VICTIMS AND ACTIVISTS OUTSIDE COURT HOUSE
  • Embargoed: 13th December 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2GSNC55FVR4DMUPZOSSECCFFQ
  • Story Text: As 68 faced human rights charges for their involvement in the kidnapping, torturing and disappearing of political prisoners at the infamous ESMA navy facility during Argentina's Dirty War era on Wednesday (November 28), a survivor who spent 15 months in the facility said he was happy to see at least some of the men responsible for the crimes standing trial.
    The ESMA III trial which opened on Wednesday is the largest yet trying dictatorship era crimes since amnesty laws protecting former members of the military junta were struck down by the Supreme Court under former President Nestor Kirchner in 2005.
    Enrique Fukman, who attended Wednesday's opening hearing, says he was kidnapped by dictatorship operatives 34 years ago.
    He told Reuters he was held by the military junta for 15 months, first being kept "hooded and tortured" for months before spending the rest of his time in captivity.

    "The fact that 68 of them had to walk into the courtroom in handcuffs really makes me happy. It makes me so happy because it means all we fought for over the past 34 years wasn't in vain. For a long time we were pretty much fighting alone, but in the end the saying, 'the only fight you lose is the one you give up on,' was proven to be true. And if you keep at it it's possible to get what you're fighting so hard for. In that way I'm very happy. Then there is the pain. The pain for those that aren't here," Fukman said.
    The military dictatorship was in power from 1976 to 1983 and it is estimated that as many as 5,000 people passed through the clandestine torture centre at the naval facility called the Naval Mechanics School, or ESMA.
    Fukman is one of only about 200 who survived to talk about what went on behind the walls of the naval facility which was in plain sight of citizens in Buenos Aires who did not know what was going on inside.
    While prisoners were held, some for hours, others for years, under the eaves of the ESMA officers' residence, officers went on living, eating, studying and socializing in the floors below.
    In 2007, the building was reopened to the public as a human rights memorial.
    Among those charged in the current case are Alfredo Astiz, Argentina's infamous "Blond Angel of Death," ex-navy officer Jorge Acosta - known as The Tiger, and a naturalized Dutch citizen accused of flying some of the 'death flights," Julio Poch, one of eight pilots facing charges.
    Though he says he is delighted to see so many of his captors and torturers facing charges for their crimes, Fukman said many more have escaped justice thus far.

    "There are a lot still missing. We have nicknames and we remember a lot of their faces in our heads, but we don't have their full names yet. And obviously, the state continues to grant them impunity by not releasing all the files. Also missing from this trial, which is an important one involving the kidnapping, disappearing, torture and rape of 800 Argentines, kidnapped fighters who passed through the ESMA, who were kidnapped, tortured, disappeared in the ESMA, but nearly 5,000 were sent to the ESMA. So, there are 4,000 missing that we still don't know the full names of. These 800 [named in the case] are those that the survivors have been able to return the identity, which those who committed genocide against us, tried to take away when they kidnapped us," Fukman added.
    Many of those who spent their last days at the naval facility met their doom in one of the so-called "death flights" in which victims were drugged and thrown from a plane to their death in the River Plate below.
    The death flights remained a mystery for years until an Argentine journalist tracked down one of the planes used in the deadly flights.
    Miriam Lewin, who was also kidnapped and imprisoned during the dictatorship, found the plane in Fort Lauderdale in the United States, in the hands of a private owner.
    The boxy, 19-seater aircraft called a Skyvan had been sold by the Argentine coastal guard but it still had its old flight records, dating back to the dictatorship, with the names of the pilots who carried out the flights.
    When investigations into the death flights got underway, a police report from 1977 was uncovered which detailed the discovery of an unidentified body that had washed up on the shore.
    A police autopsy on the body concluded at the time that the person had died from multiple traumatic injuries caused by a fall from altitude.
    DNA testing later proved the body belonged to the French nun Leonie Duquet.
    Former detainees say the military had tried to cover its tracks however with photos like this: showing the two French nuns as though they had been kidnapped by the guerrilla group the Montoneros, and not the by the government.
    An ESMA prisoner told investigators he was forced to take the photograph by guards and that the two French nuns were taken away shortly after and never seen again.
    Lawyers representing some of the accused have asked the court to allow them to not be present during the hearings due to their advanced age and health problems.
    The court ordered they be seen by a doctor to determine if they are healthy enough to face the trial which could last as long as two years.
    According to a government report, more than 11,000 people died or disappeared during the Dirty War, but human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000.
    How many were thrown overboard in the death flights is uncertain.
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