ARGENTINA: MEDIA MOGUL ERNESTINA HERRERA DE NOBLE ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF FALSIFYING DOCUMENTS IN THE ADOPTION OF HER CHILDREN

Record ID: 645792

  • Title: ARGENTINA: MEDIA MOGUL ERNESTINA HERRERA DE NOBLE ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF FALSIFYING DOCUMENTS IN THE ADOPTION OF HER CHILDREN
  • Date: 19th December 2002
  • Summary: (W1)BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (DECEMBER 18, 2002) (REUTERS) SLV/LAS EXTERIOR OF CLARIN NEWSPAPER OFFICES; SCU LOGO ON WALL; MV SECURITY PERSONNEL (5 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 3rd January 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVA2V121SGX0I66MZEYOUZTLII56
  • Story Text: An Argentine media mogul has been arrested on charges of falsifying documents in a probe that investigates the alleged connection between the decades-old adoptions of her children and babies stolen during Argentina's military dictatorship.
    The owner of Argentina's biggest newspaper has been arrested on suspicion of using false documents in the adoption of her children whom rights groups suspect were stolen from leftists during the last military dictatorship, authorities said on Wednesday (December 18, 2002).
    Court officials said 77-year-old Ernestina Herrera de Noble owner of Clarin newspaper, would be questioned later on Wednesday by Federal Judge Roberto Marquevich who ordered her arrest late on Tuesday (December 17). She was being held at police headquarters in the capital.
    Other court sources said her adoptive children Felipe and Marcela, both 26, had been ordered to give blood samples for DNA checks.
    Police said she had been arrested on suspicion of "falsification of documents". The courts must now decide whether to press formal charges.
    Rights groups have searched for hundreds of babies stolen from detainees and often illegally adopted by military couples during the 1976-1983 "Dirty War."
    Blindfolded and chained to their beds, many mothers were subjected to caesarean deliveries, then had their babies snatched before they were killed or "disappeared" meaning their bodies were never found.
    Clarin, one of the biggest selling Spanish-language newspapers in the world, blasted the detention as "arbitrary,"
    called it an "illegal and flagrant abuse" of Herrera.
    The paper said the arrest was linked to a 1995 case backed by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a rights group that has campaigned for decades to discover the fates of up to 30,000 suspected leftists who disappeared during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
    "For the last 25 years," said Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, "our interest as grandmothers has been to find our grandchildren, to restore their rights and for them to know who their families are and who their parents were, and not to persecute anyone, be that Ernestina Herrera de Noble or John Doe."
    It also pointed out that two similar cases lodged against Herrera had been dismissed by the courts years ago.
    The arrest had followed on the heels of a new charge brought by a woman who claimed that there were irregularities in Herrera's adoptions, according to Rosa Roisinblit, vice president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
    Nearly two decades after the end of the dictatorship, courts are still probing rights cases.
    In a separate probe this year Courts are investigating allegations that former executives of U.S. auto maker Ford's F.N> local unit were implicated in the "disappearances" of employees during dictatorship.
    And German automaker DaimlerChrysler AG DCXGn.DE has set up an independent inquiry into the unexplained disappearance of 14 workers' council representatives in Argentina in the 1970s.
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