Dirty war officer on trial for genocide

A former Argentinian navy officer went on trial in Madrid today on charges of genocide, torture and terrorism committed during his country’s “dirty war” more than two decades ago.

He is the first person tried in Spain for crimes against humanity committed in another nation.

Adolfo Scilingo, 58, who has been on a hunger strike since mid-December, arrived at the National Court in an ambulance and suffered a dizzy spell in a holding cell, delaying the start of proceedings.

Scilingo voluntarily went to Spain in 1997 to testify before Judge Baltasar Garzon, who since the late 1990s has spearheaded a probe into human rights violations by military regimes in Argentina and Chile.

He confessed then to throwing 30 drugged, naked dissidents from planes into the Atlantic but has since recanted.

The case is the latest in a growing body of international law that allows courts in one country to judge human rights crimes allegedly committed in another, regardless of the suspect’s nationality.

Scilingo was imprisoned after he told Garzon that he threw dissidents alive out of aircraft in what were known as ”death flights”.

In Argentina, he was one of the first officers to come forward and openly admit such atrocities were committed under the junta’s brutal 1976-83 crackdown of left wingers.

Garzon’s indictment of Scilingo and dozens of other suspects argues that the Argentine regime tried to systematically eliminate an entire group of people - its opponents – and that this amounted to attempted genocide.

Officially, more than 13,000 people disappeared during Argentina’s crackdown on dissidents.

Some human rights groups claim there were as many as 30,000 victims.