Woman tells trial of torture by burning

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 6

Woman tells trial of torture by burning

NZPA-Reuter Buenos Aires

The last witnesses in the human rights trial of nine former Argentinian military leaders added more accounts of torture yesterday to more than three months of harrowing evidence. Gladys Evarista Cuervo, a nurse at a hospital used as a torture and prison camp by security forces, said that she was kidnapped and held in a closet at the medical centre in Buenos Aires in late 1976.

Her captors had broken her breast-bone and ribs, set fire to her pubic hair, and burned her with lighters.

She described seeing a doctor lie in a pool of blood and urine after a stick had been forced up his rectum. The doctor, Jorge Roitman, was one of at least 9000 people who disappeared during military rule between 1976 and 1983 after being abducted by security forces.

None of the former military leaders has appeared in court during the testimony by nearly 1000 witnesses, most of whom described kidnappings, torture, and murder at the hands of security forces. Court sources said that

the Prosecutor, Mr Julio Strassera, had intended to call twice as many witnesses but had not needed to after those who testified had implicated all branches of the armed forces in crimes committed throughout the country under military rule.

Mr Strassera would ask for life sentences for four of the accused, two former Presidents, Lieutenant-Gen-erals Jorge Videla and Roberto Viola, and two Navy commanders, Admirals Emilio Massera and Armando Lambruschini, they said. He would seek lesser sentences for the other five,

among them another former President, Leiutenant-Gen-eral Leopoldo Galtieri. The President, Mr Raul Alfonsin, ordered the trial shortly after taking office in late 1983, saying that the military leaders had based their fight against Leftist guerrillas on illegal methods. The Court sources said that the Court would recess until September 2, when the defence and prosecution were due to make their final submissions. Mr Strassera said that the accused would make their first appearance in open court to hear the submissions, which would be delivered over about a month, they would be allowed to address the court before it delivered a verdict.

Massera’s defence lawyer said that his client had testified in a private Court session that the military junta had no role in planning the fight against guerrillas. Asked if members of security forces had tortured prisoners in clandestine camps, the lawyer said, “Obviously not. The general concept behind the action of the regime was Western, humanist and Christian.”