Last night Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) approved the extradition of Argentine Claudio Vallejos for crimes against humanity committed during the last dictatorship.

Vallejos, known as “el Gordo”, was arrested for fraud in January 2011 in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. He was later identified by members of human rights organizations, and his extradition was subsequently requested in February under the “megacausa ESMA”, a series of lawsuits related to crimes committed during the military dictatorship of 1976-83.

Vallejos, who was in the Army at the time of the last dictatorship, is accused by the Argentine justice system of torture, homicide, kidnapping, and forced disappearing of persons, much of which is alleged to have been carried out at the infamous Naval School of Mechanics (ESMA).

In a 1986 interview with the magazine Senhor, Vallejos admitted to participating in the kidnapping of Brazilian pianist Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Junior, whom had been “confused with a subversive”. Cerqueira, he says, was later killed at ESMA by Alfredo Aztiz, one of the most feared agents of the dictatorship.

STF minister Gilmar Mendes announced that Vallejos will be extradited to Argentina on the condition that he is tried only under the kidnapping charge, and that the Argentine government commutes an eventual life sentence to a maximum sentence of 30 years, in keeping with Brazilian legislation. He also announced that the extradition will not take place until the conclusion of Vallejo’s trial for fraud.

Brazilian law has no counterpart for “forced disappearing of persons,” one of the crimes Vallejos is charged with in Argentina. It is estimated that during the last dictatorship, up to 30,000 people were killed or disappeared.

Nora Centeno, 78, was assaulted in her own home by three intruders who beat her with a gun stock and subsequently fled after ransacking her money, jewelry and some personal items.

Nora Centeno is the mother of a desaparecido who went missing in 1976 during the last military dictatorship. Centeno said that the attack is thought to be politically motivated. She only reported it to the police three days later because she wanted to uncover the identity of “the people behind the attack.”

“They were young kids and they were not from a marginal social class, they were speaking proper Spanish. This was not a casual intrusion. What they did was real torture. I want justice to get to the bottom of this and find out who sent them,” Mrs. Centeno said.

The National Campaign Against Enforced Disappearances in Mexico has recorded 28 forced disappearances of human rights defenders from 2005 until now. The announcement was made on the International Day of the Disappeared.

In addition, the Working Group on Enforced Disappearance of the United Nations reported that since 2006 around 3 000 people have disappeared in Mexico.

More than 70 member organizations of the campaign claimed that to date 100% impunity exists in all these cases.

Similarly, the indictment alleges that relatives of the victims can not resort to international instances because of the state’s refusal to recognize its jurisdiction. Reference was made to entities such as the Committee Against Forced Disappearances of the United Nations.

The agencies added that the increase in the numbers of crimes demonstrates that there is no political will of the authorities to eradicate this problem.

There are calls for the enactment of a Law on Forced Disappearance to ensure prevention, punishment and eradication of this practice. They demand that the authorities create a national public register of all missing people. They added that the design, implementation and monitoring of registration is based on the participation of civil society.

Story Courtesy of Agencia Pulsar.

Abuelas remembering the disappeared on March 24, 2011 (Photo: Antonio Giron)

“In Argentina, not everybody knows who they are.” This is the way the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, or the ‘Abuelas’, introduce their campaign to recover their grandchildren, los desaparecidos vivos, or the living disappeared, who went missing during the last dictatorship in what is now known as a systematic plan to steal children. From 1976 to 1983 an estimated 500 children were abducted along with their parents or born in captivity and then given away or sold to military families and their sympathizers. Out of those 500, 103 have ‘appeared’; this could mean either that the grandchild in question has been found and identified, or that there is evidence that the child was murdered along with his or her parents.

For thirty-four years now, the Grandmothers have quietly but persistently sought their grandchildren. They have withstood death threats, defied society’s disbelief, and disputed legal and judicial inertia; they have persisted through miles of red tape, pioneered technological innovations and scientific advances, and added to the sum total of knowledge regarding human rights. As a result of these tireless efforts, the Abuelas have been nominated this year, for the fourth year running, for the Nobel Peace Prize. But their path to fame has been everything but desirable.

Noble vs. Nobel

The Abuelas have been subjected to an uncommonly objectionable spotlight recently due to the high profile case of the Noble Herrera children, heirs to the Clarín Media Group fortune. However, what no media venue in Argentina seems to remember is that it was Ernestina Herrera de Noble herself who started the media hype surrounding her adopted children when in 2003 she wrote an open letter in the editorial page of Clarín where she declared she has spoken with her children about the “possibility that they are children of desaparecidos“. There can be no doubt that the ‘adoption’ of both Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera is surrounded by questionable circumstances. According to Herrera de Noble’s declaration to Judge Ofelia Hejt in April 1976, she discovered ‘Marcela’ in a box on her doorstep and offered a neighbour and caretaker as witnesses. It was discovered in 2001, at age 85 the alleged caretaker, Roberto Antonio Garcia, declared before a tribunal that Herrera de Noble had never lived in the address given at the time, nor had the alleged neighbour lived there (later confirmed by the neighbour’s granddaughter and the police), and that he had never acted as her caretaker at any time.

In the case of ‘Felipe’, Herrera de Noble appeared before the same judge in July 1976 wanting to adopt another child; it just so happens that a single mother, Carmen Luisa Delta, also appeared at the same time wanting to give her ‘son’ up for adoption. It is to be supposed that all parties involved were able to settle matters satisfactorily, except for the gigantic odds against such an event really happening. In 2001, Judge Roberto Markovich was able to confirm that the number of Delta’s identity card belonged to a Hugo Talkowski and that ‘Carmen Luisa Delta’ never existed. Judge Hejt, now deceased, assumed her judge’s robes during the dictatorship and stepped down once the de facto government fell.

After a decade of fits and starts regarding whether or not the Noble Herrera children should comply with the law and submit to genetic testing, their data has finally been taken and recorded in the National Genetic Database, or BNDG. Notwithstanding the fact that thus far there has been no genetic match does not mean that the Noble children were not ‘appropriated’; the BNDG is by no means complete, meaning that not all the relatives of the disappeared have registered their DNA profiles there, and in some cases, all surviving family members of victims have themselves died. To date there are over 2,700 cases where no genetic matches have been found. The DNA of these individuals is kept in the database, nonetheless, for future scanning.

Despite claims from Clarín Media Group and the Noble de Herrera lawyers that the pair has suffered “persecutions causing irreparable damage”, the fact remains that the lack of compliance with the law shown since 2001 and the media frenzy surrounding the case falls at the door of the Noble clan and nowhere else. It is the public nature of Herrera de Noble’s occupation that has thrust this case into the spotlight and into the political arena, evidently to use whatever leverage, albeit one’s own ‘adopted’ children, to sling mud at the present administration. By converting Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera into victims of an alleged political persecution, the Clarín Media Group mitigates and displaces “the horrifying crimes committed during the dictatorship and which are never dealt with by them in the public discussion of this case”.

The Myth of Argentina’s ‘Dirty Little War’

The significance of the illegal appropriation of children during the last dictatorship must be understood within the framework of the ‘Process of National Reorganisation’ the euphemism the military junta used to refer to their practise of silencing, abducting, and murdering any opposition to their ideas or government. Only five years have passed since the revoking of the ‘Indulto’ or ‘Reprieve’ which pardoned all repressors who acted during the dictatorship from any wrongdoing. During this time, the lawyers for the members of the military junta and other repressors have consistently offered up this line of defence, in the words of Florencio Varela, for the defence: “Here there was an Armed Force that acted according to a line of command; no one acted according to whim…this was a war and war is horrible. The mistake I see is that you want to judge acts of war according to the rights of peacetime. Those 500 children are like the 30, 000 desaparecidos (missing); that’s all make-believe.” To which federal judge Carlos Rozanski famously replied (2006): “all these are crimes committed against humanity within the Argentine Republic…this is genocide.”

Pure Cynicism: Gallone with the mothers of Plaza de Mayo 1982 – (source wikimedia)

During the dictatorship, the de facto government considered that the subversive elements in the society that had to be eliminated were contagious; that is, that ideologies had to be stamped out by ‘disciplining and bringing subversive sectors of society under control’ as well as relocating the children of said subversives to ‘right-minded’ families, so that they would not ‘feel nor think’ like their parents. Adolfo Casabal Elias, defence lawyer for Miguel Etchecolatz (one of the most brutal repressors to ever come to trial in recent years) made this public declaration regarding the ‘re-location’ of children during the dictatorship: “In reality there was no plan to kidnap children; on the contrary, what the Armed Forces were trying to do was place the guerrilla children in good hands.”

One of the most devastating weapons of military repression applied to Argentine society during this time period was to keep people isolated, in order to make sure that there were no grass-roots efforts at unification at any level, because, of course, “in unity there is strength”. Common propaganda slogans would affirm: “Silence is health” or “Do you know where your child is?” In this way a family would be stigmatized if any member were detained, abducted, or ‘disappeared’, and others would stay away from them for fear or ignorance. But eventually, the despair and fear that accompanies a parent with a missing child drove many affected mothers to knock on doors – offices of lawmakers, hospitals, churches, etcetera – looking for their children and/or information as to their whereabouts. The ‘Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’, or ‘Madres‘, was formed initially from women who would constantly bump into one another in the waiting rooms of these different bureaucratic offices and came to discover that they had a common goal: recovery of their missing children alive, justice for the victims and their families, and punishment for those responsible. Their missing children were the tie that brought them together despite the efforts of the repressors to alienate them.

In June 1977, after six months of Thursdays walking the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada to protest the silence of the de facto government regarding the fates of their missing children, one of the Madres asked: “Who else is not only looking for a missing child, but also a missing grandchild?” Eleven other women stood forth, and thus was born the organisation known today as the Abuelas. Over three decades have passed and nothing has weakened the passion of these women in their search for their grandchildren. Perhaps it is their conviction that their grandchildren survive, whereas it is doubtful nowadays that a desaparecido would be found living, which inspires them to continue their search to recover them.

Grandparentage Index

Thanks to the unflagging efforts of the Abuelas, a new method for identifying the genetic relationship between a grandparent and grandchild was developed. Argentine law requires that there be a scientific procedure capable of establishing a biological link between the subjects in question in order to prove identity. For this reason, the Abuelas contacted Dr. Fred Allen of the Blood Centre in New York, as well as Dr. Mary-Claire King and Dr. Cristian Orrego from the University of Berkeley who in response to the Abuelas’ plea, actually developed the method whereby said biological link can be established even after skipping a generation. The technique is called the ‘Indice de Abuelidad’, or Grandparentage Index, or in honour of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, and is 99.9% reliable.

Alfonsín meeting with the Madres (source Wikimedia)

Once this technique was established, the Abuelas achieved an even greater goal. In February, 1986, three years after democracy had been established in Argentina, the Abuelas met with then-president Raúl Alfonsín and presented him with their concerns regarding the difficulties of establishing biological connections legally in the country. They suggested the creation of a National Genetic Database (or BNDG, by its initials in Spanish), whereby DNA samples of family members and children doubting their parentage could be obtained, stored, and compared. Now as the Abuelas are reaching an ever advancing age, their genetic data is safe in the BNDG so that those who have doubts about their real identity can compare their data even though the grandmother in question might no longer be alive.

The Argentine Clauses

The Abuelas were also key to the formation of the CONADI or National Commission for the Right to Identity. But what exactly is the right to Identity? While other rights, such as the right to life or free speech are easy to understand, the right to identity is not so obvious. It is, in short, the right of every person “to know who he or she is”. Because of the abuses of the dictatorship and ‘baby theft’ or illegal adoption practices, many young adults have no clue as to their true identity, their real families; many have even by now formed families of their own, and are raising their own children ignorant of their roots and history. In legal terms, those responsible for these crimes are guilty of ‘suppressing the identity’ of the children involved. So, 30 years after declaring the rights of the child, on 20th November 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention of the Rights of the Child, or UNCRC, including three clauses that make reference specifically to the Argentine experience regarding the illegal appropriation or ‘suppression of identity’ of children during the years of the de facto government. These clauses are known as the ‘Argentine clauses’:

Article 7 (Registration, name, nationality, care):  All children have the right to a legally registered name, officially recognised by the government. Children have the right to a nationality (to belong to a country). Children also have the right to know and, as far as possible, to be cared for by their parents.

Article 8 (Preservation of identity):  Children have the right to an identity – an official record of who they are. Governments should respect children’s right to a name, a nationality and family ties.

Article 11 (Kidnapping):  Governments should take steps to stop children being taken out of their own country illegally. This article is particularly concerned with parental abductions. The Convention’s Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography has a provision that concerns abduction for financial gain.

It must be remembered that the events in question are still painful in the minds of most Argentines; the past is far from being resolved, and the motto of the Grandmothers – Truth, Memory, Justice – is not yet fait accompli. Julio E. Nosiglia in his book, ‘War Booty’, quotes the words of Judge Marta Delia Pons directed towards one of the Abuelas: “Personally, I’m convinced that your children were terrorists. And for me, terrorism is synonymous with killer. I have no intention of returning a killer’s children to him. Because it wouldn’t be just to do so. Because he doesn’t know how to raise them and because he has no right to raise them…you will get custody of these children over my dead body.” The fact that these words are quoted from a judge, and a woman to boot, give some idea of how entrenched the political propaganda imparted by the civil and military authorities during the dictatorship was. However the appearance of legal respectability has finally begun to fall apart. Two weeks ago, Pons’ tribunal was closed, but the Abuelas’ legal team and a public prosecutor were able to ‘rescue’ over a thousand archives that will hopefully shed some light on the whereabouts of some of the missing grandchildren.

Estela Barnes de Carlotto (Photo: Deutsche Welle)

Additionally, a little over a month ago, the president of the Abuelas, Estela de Carlotto, while testifying yet again during a trial against a former perpetrator, formally requested that the government open the files of the Secretary for State Intelligence (SIDE), the sinister local version of the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. Again, it is hoped that historical transparency will give new leads as to the whereabouts of not just the grandchildren but of the remains of their parents, and the other desaparecidos.

The Better Part of Valour

During more than 30 years of searching, the Abuelas have never revealed the public or ‘appropriated’ identity of one of the recovered grandchildren, only the names given to them by their biological parents. The Noble Herrera case is neither the first case where judges have ordered genetic samples to be taken nor the first case where the grandchildren have resisted knowledge of their true identity. In fact, the discretion with which the Abuelas carry forth their tasks has ironically called worldwide attention to their activities. This will be the fourth year that the Abuelas have been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, though the women themselves, many of whom now are quite elderly, are not interested in prizes: “I’ll be happy when I know where my children and grandchildren are,” says Chichi Mariani, one of the co-founders of Abuelas.

If discretion is the better part of valour, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have proven themselves to be examples of civic courage and perseverance. In their attempts to track down the members of their own families, they ended up forming a greater, extended bond with the other grandmothers and families, earning them an important place in modern Argentine society. When asked if their contribution to human rights and the return of democracy in Argentina is an example of grace under fire, one grandmother replied: “I’m no longer just looking for my grandson; I, along with the other grandmothers are engaged in this struggle, this great collective struggle and it’s something that has united us all…we all come from different social groups, but we came together because of our pain and our hope…because we do have much hope. But without the combined help of everybody, we would never have found our grandchildren.” As their website mission statement declares: “The history of the Abuelas is a chapter of hope in the history of Argentina because it proves that through collective effort it is possible to achieve our dreams.”

Abuelas de la Paz from Politegia on Vimeo.

Former soldier Norberto Atilio Bianco was accused of playing a role in the systematic plan of robbing babies born in captivity during the last military dictatorship in that country. The repressor was extradited from Asunción.

He will be judged by lawyer Alberto Martín Suárez,Federal Criminal Justice of San Martín, province of Buenos Aires.

Atilio Bianco was also accused of attending births of imprisoned-disappeared people between 1977 and 1978.

In 1985 the human rights organization Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo launched a case against him and his wife, Susana Wherli.

The accusation happened after the Abuelas received complaints that children of disappeared people had been listed by Bianco and his wife as children of their own.

After the start of legal actions, the repressor fled to Paraguay with his wife and appropriated children.

They were children of the disappeared Norma Tato, Jorge Casariego, and a woman whose identity remains unknown.

In 2006, the Abuelas once again denounced the former soldier for the kidnapping and handing off of children of disappeared people to other appropriators.

Finally, in 2008 he was detained for the second time and convicted by domiciliary arrest in Paraguay. However, the presented sentence was appealed. For this reason, his extradition is happening several years later.

Story courtesy of Agencia Pulsar, news agency of the AMARC-ALC

The adoptive children of the Clarín media group director have agreed to DNA testing after their latest court appeal was rejected.

This morning the siblings Felipe and Marcela Noble Herrera informed Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado that they will submit to a DNA testing to “put an end to the political and media harassment and persecution against them.”

Their genetic information will be used to determine whether they are the biological children of people who were disappeared during the last dictatorship (1976-1983). The test results will be compared to DNA in the National Bank of Genetic Data (BNDG), which holds genetic information of nearly two hundred families who were victims of the last dictatorship, and who hope to find babies who were stolen during the period.

In May 2010, Judge Salgado ruled that the children would be required to submit to a DNA test. In December 2010, their appeal was rejected.

This announcement marks a potential end to a legal battle that began nearly a decade ago. In 2002 the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo went to court to demand DNA tests from the Noble Herrera siblings, who they suspected had been illegally appropriated by their adoptive father, Roberto Noble. Although the siblings had previously agreed to conduct their own DNA tests and compare them to the two families who believed they might have a blood relation, they refused to have their DNA tested formally and compared with the BNDG.

Through genetic testing the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have found over one hundred children who were illegally appropriated from the disappeared. They estimate the total number to be over 400.

The Abuelas (Grandmothers) of Plaza de Mayo held a rally in front of the Palacio de Tribunales, in Buenos Aires. It was to demand advances in research on the identity of the adopted children of the owner of the Clarín group. The court case is 10 years old.

The human rights group, Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo, is heading a lawsuit to determine the identities of Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera.

They are the children adopted in 1976, during the dictatorship, by the owner of the multimedia Clarín Group, Ernestina Herrera de Noble.

The court case’s delays and continual appeals by the Noble family have prolonged the identity claim for 10 years.

To bring attention to this elapsed time, the Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo organized a rally in Buenos Aires, in front of the courthouse.

The Noble siblings are opposed to providing blood samples that would be compared with DNA from relatives of dictatorship victims, seeking stolen babies between 1976 and 1983.

The adopted children of the Clarín group owner only accepted to be compared with two family complainants in the criminal case.

The National Chamber of Criminal Appeals must decide whether to approve the collection of samples with or without the consent of the Noble brothers. This decision was ratified by the Federal Court of San Martín.

It is expected that the Noble family will appeal the decision until it reaches the Supreme Court.

Story courtesy of Agencia Púlsar, the news agency of AMARC-ALC.

Today saw various activities including marches, art exhibitions and musical performances to commemorate the coup that lead to the last military dictatorship, 35 years ago. The coup of 24th March 1976 was followed by more than seven years of state terror in which some 30,000 people are believed to have been killed or disappeared.

Nora Morales de Cortiñas, of human rights organisation Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, spoke this morning about the completion of trials against oppressors throughout the country, noting that “we are trying to end impunity to not re-commit such heinous acts we did, no more civil-military dictatorship. Nowadays there are trials throughout the country and we are trying to end impunity”.

‘Truth and Justice’ is the motto of today’s march to the Plaza de Mayo, with acts beginning at 2.30pm and lasting until approximately 8pm. The marches depart from Plaza Congreso or 9 de Julio and will be led by numerous human rights and memory organisations.

Meanwhile, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who started their activities under the theme ‘People in Action’ on 16th March, will close their programme today at 6pm. This will be occurring by means of a rally to condemn the coup on the Mercado Central’s ‘playón’ under the slogan “For the blood of our children to obtain schools, hospitals, homes and jobs for all.”

Appearing as speakers at this event will be the head of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, and the Minister of Economy and candidate to head of Government of Buenos Aires, Amado Boudou. In the morning he attend the launch of the exhibition “Deep America” ​​in the Cultural Area Our Children (ECuNHi), which operates in the former Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA).

De Bonafini called 24th March “a day of great commitment that every time will have more links with politics.”

Emilio Eduardo Massera, former member of the military government of the last dictatorship in Argentina, died yesterday at the age of 85. He suffered a cardiac arrest in Buenos Aires Naval hospital, where his two sons were visiting him.

Along with Jorge Rafael Videla and Orlando Ramon Agosti, Massera was associated with the military junta that deposed of President “Isabel” Perón. During the the 1976 military coup he was the Commander of the Argentine Navy.

Following the restoration to democracy in December 1983, Massera, along with other members of the military junta were tried in a federal court for human rights violations. Responsible for the former School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA), Massera oversaw the largest clandestine detention center of the military dictatorship.

Receiving a life sentence under Raul Alfonsin’s government for crimes including abortion, assassination, and torture during the dictatorship, Massera was only imprisoned for five years. In 1990, along with other military oppressors, Massera was given amnesty by former President Carlos Menem. The decade after his release, the court reopened the human rights trials, ruling Menem’s pardon as unconstitutional. Massera suffered a stroke, however, in 2005 and was declared unfit for trial.

Human Rights organisations and political groups have urged the human rights trials to continue.

President of the organisation Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto, stated that it was “regrettable” that Massera died without receiving adequate punishment for his crimes.

Victoria Donda, President of the Human Rights Commission of the Lower House, stated that “Emilio Massera died unpunished, which represents a serious offence to democracy and its institutions, because we believe that the only possible place for a genocide is prison”.

Donda is among the many thousands of victims of the dictatorship, born when her mother was held captive at the Navy Mechanical School (ESMA). Her mother was killed in the detention centre soon after giving birth, following which Donda was illegally adopted. She recovered her identity as a result of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo organisation, who continue to search for the children of the desaparecidos.

Donda called for the ESMA trials to continue as quickly as possible: “No other repressor should die unpunished”. These requests for ongoing cases to be undertaken rapidly are particularly pertinent as seven new trials are scheduled for the coming months. The total number of human rights abusers prosecuted for violations now stands at 783, over 140 more than in 2009.

The Argentine courts have sent over one thousand blood and bone samples to special labs in the United States in order to identify the remains of “desaparecidos,” or missing persons, from the last military dictatorship. The operation was directed by the President of the II Court of the Federal Chamber, Horacio Cattani, in the context of the program “Search for the Truth and Final Destination of Missing People”, which has been carried out by the Tribunal since 1995.

Between 2008 and 2009, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team collected roughly 8 bone and blood samples, which made it possible to identify 181 missing persons and return their remains to their families. The samples are sent first to the Foreign Relations, International Trade and Religious Affairs Ministry, as well as to the Argentine Embassy in Washington, in charge of taking the boxes with the samples to the lab with the objective of ensuring its security.

In order to preserve anonymity and security, the samples are labeled with bar codes and are kept highly confidential.