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Partridge
03-23-2006, 12:07 PM
[Partridge: I bet if you listen real hard, you can hear the incessant hum of a thousand shredding machines at work]

Argentina to open secret archives
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4836128.stm)

Argentina has decided to make public all secret archives of the armed forces to help uncover human rights violations committed under military rule. The decision was announced by Defence Minister Nilda Garre.

It comes on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the coup, by which the military seized power in 1976.

Human rights groups say up to 30,000 political opponents of the regime were kidnapped, detained and later executed during seven years of military rule.

The government issued a decree to guarantee unrestricted access to information on what it said were grave acts committed during the so-called Dirty War.

It ordered all the branches of the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence to provide access their secret files when required.

Recovered documents will be kept at the National Memory Archive, an institution created by President Nestor Kirchner three years ago.

Correspondents say the secret files could play a key role in trials against former military officers accused of human rights abuses, after the Argentine Congress voted to scrap laws protecting them from prosecution in 2003.

Some high-ranking officers such as Gen Rafael Videla - who seized power in 1976 - are under house arrest over the illegal adoption of children born to political prisoners during military rule.

On Friday, President Kirchner is expected to lead an official ceremony to mark the anniversary of the coup.

Partridge
05-09-2006, 10:06 AM
Six wanted over 'Dirty War' case
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4753687.stm)

Argentina has requested the extradition of six men from Uruguay over the 1976 disappearance of the daughter-in law of a famous Argentine poet, Juan Gelman. The accused, five ex-military officers and an ex-policeman, have already been taken into custody in Uruguay.

Nineteen-year-old Maria Claudia Garcia was seven months pregnant when she was abducted in Buenos Aires 30 years ago.

In the 1970s, the military rulers of Argentina and Uruguay collaborated to hunt down opponents and stifle dissent.

The abduction and presumed killing of Juan Gelman's daughter-in-law remains a high-profile, unresolved case from those times, in which some 13,000 people are officially listed as dead or missing.

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner has repeatedly called for Uruguay's help in solving the investigation into Maria Claudia's disappearance, the Associated Press reports.

Maria Claudia was kidnapped at the start of Argentina's seven-year military dictatorship.

Reunited

Investigators believe she was secretly taken to the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, held until she gave birth to a baby girl, and then killed.

The military authorities in Uruguay gave the baby to a local couple to adopt.

She was reunited with her biological family after being located by Mr Gelman, one of Argentina's leading poets, nearly 25 years later.

Argentina's ambassador to Uruguay, Hernan Patino Mayer, delivered the extradition request to the Uruguayan authorities.

A statement by the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry said they had received a request to extradite the six, named as Jose Ricardo Arab Fernandez, Jose Nino Gavazzo Pereira, Ricardo Jose Medina Blanco, Ernesto Avelino Rama Pereira, Jorge Alberto Silveira Quesada, and Gilberto Valentin Vazquez Bisio.