Argentine "torture’ detailed

Press, 1 June 1981, Page 6

Argentine "torture’ detailed

NZPA-NYTNS Washington The cell is narrow and high. When the prisoner jumps he cannot touch the ceiling. The floor is always wet. He liked the last cell better. It had a hole-in-the-ground toilet. Now he must call a guard but they don’t always come and he fouls himself. Special permission is needed to wash clothes. He waits naked in the freezing cell for them to dry and be returned.' ' ' When the cell lights dim he knows they are using "Susan” the electric-shock machine, to soften up prisoners during questioning. Sometimes the prisoners “cool out” even before they can be questioned. "Cool out” means to ■ die.: ■■■■;. v ■-t.- - : y Nazi. Germany? No. this is;;

present-day Argentina, according to the prisoner, Mr Jacobo Timerman, who describes the ordeal in a book, “Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without A Number.” Mr Timerman, aged <57, is the Jewish former owner and editor of the Buenos Aires - liberal newspaper “La Opinion.” A passionate advocate of social justice, he had criticised the Government, military services, secret police, and terrorist gangs. One April dawn in 1977 he was arrested in his apartment and he disappeared, like thousands of other Argentinians, into custody of the First Army Corps. He was jailed, questioned, and tortured by “Susan.” Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled that he had been imprisoned illegally but the Army turned a deaf ear."

Mr Timerman writes, “From the very first interrogation they figured they had found what they had been looking for for a long time: one of the sages of Zion, a central axis of the Jewish anti-Argentine conspiracy. “My first interrogation took place after I’d been standing for several hours with my arms handcuffed behind my back, my eyes blindfolded. It was a sort of revelation for the interrogators. Why kill the hen that lays the gold eggs? Better to exploit him for the ■ most important trial against the international Jewish conspiracy. "That’s what saved my life. From that moment on my arrest was officially recognised.” ' ' After 30 months in jail, Mr. Timer man was taken to the

Federal Security Office and was told that he would be stripped of his property and citizenship and that he would be expelled from Argentina. He was at once hustled to the airport. An international protest over his arrest had produced results. Israeli security men surrounded Mr Timerman at the airport and an Israeli diplomat closed the plane’s door to make sure that he could not be snatched from the aircraft. He learned later that police in the countries where the plane stopped on its way to Rome had checked his arrival to make sure that he had hot been kidnapped by Argentine agents. Later still he learned that 15 minutes after leaving the airport in Argentina a group of military men had arrived with that very mission,