Junta leader detained

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 10

Junta leader detained

NZPA-Reuter Buenos Aires A former Argentinian military President, Lieuten-ant-General Roberto Viola, was detained yesterday at a maximum security jail.' He was the third of nine former military leaders to be detained in the trials, ordered by the elected Government of Raul Alfonsin. Court sources said that General Viola, who was the Army Chief of Staff when the military seized power in a coup in 1976, and became the military administration’s second President, in 1981, had been sent to a maximum security jail near the federal court. Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla, who led the 1976 coup and was President from then .until 1981, is being held at the same jail with Admiral Emilio Massera, another former junta member. They are accused of human rights abuses in a ruthless anti-subversion campaign whose targets included the defunct Montoneros guerrilla group. A former leader of the group, Mario Firmenich, aged 36, was extradited from Brazil on Monday. A judge is preparing to question him about the murder of a businessman in 1979 and an attack on a former Treasury Secretary. Shortly after taking office in December, Mr Alfonsin ordered the trials of former

guerrilla leaders and nine former military junta members for sowing “terror, pain, and death across the breadth of Argentine society”. Federal courts took over the trials against the former military junta members after a supreme military tribunal said that it could find no evidence they had violated human rights. Three former junta members, including General Viola, have filed writs asking that, the cases against them be returned to the military tribunal, arguing that civilian courts have no jurisdiction over them. The appeal court has not yet ruffed on the applications.