Argentinean war criminal jailed

SPAIN’S High Court sentenced a former Argentinean navy captain to 640 years in jail yesterday for crimes against humanity, convicting him of throwing political prisoners from planes in Argentina’s dirty war.

Adolfo Scilingo, 58, was put on trial in Spain for genocide, the first trial in Spain under laws allowing the prosecution of crimes committed in another country, but the court ruled that ‘crimes against humanity’ was the correct term.

“Without a doubt this is an historic sentence from an historic trial. We are extremely satisfied,” said Carlos Slepoy, a lawyer for Argentine dirty war victims who brought the case.

“This is partial justice for the 30,000 disappeared,” said Andrea Benites-Duomont, who was kidnapped by the Argentine military.

Scilingo’s court-appointed defence lawyer said his client was unfairly made to answer for all the atrocities carried out during the 1976-83 dirty war by a military junta fighting a leftist insurgency. He said he would appeal the verdict.

Scilingo was found guilty of helping to kill 30 people on two ‘death flights’ in which drugged and naked prisoners were pushed out of planes into the sea.

“In a special morbid joke they made them (the prisoners) dance to Brazilian music,” the sentence said. It also detailed how officers tortured victims with electric shocks that burned flesh in sessions referred to as “barbecues.”

Scilingo received 30 terms of 21 years in jail for the deaths and five years for each of the other counts. However, under Spanish law he cannot serve more than 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 9,138 years.

Amnesty International said the ruling “confirms a fundamental norm of international law, that all states have universal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes against humanity.”

Scilingo, who came to Spain voluntarily in 1997 to testify, told Spanish investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon and reporters in dozens of interviews that he took part in the ‘death flights’, but he later retracted the story and protested his innocence.

Malou Cerutti, whose husband and father disappeared in the ‘dirty war’, said with tears in her eyes she had felt peace, but also immense pain, as a judge detailed Scilingo’s crimes.

Spain’s High Court has asserted powers to try suspects for genocide, terrorism or torture committed anywhere in the world if Spanish victims are involved.

During the dirty war guerrillas launched strikes against military barracks and killed officers. Opponents of the junta say the military response was disproportionate, rounding up suspects without due process of law.

The trial retold the dark period in Argentine history with testimony about how children were tortured in front of their parents and how pregnant women were kidnapped and had their babies stolen.