Argentina halts junta crimes prosecutions

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 10

Argentina halts junta crimes prosecutions

NZPA-Reuter

Buenos Aires

A statute of limitations has gone into effect shielding hundreds of Argentine officers from •prosecution for human rights violations committed during military rule from 1976 to 1983. Official sources said about 150 people, mostly military officers, had been charged with human rights crimes in a flurry of court activity before the deadline at midnight on Sunday. "An amnesty has been granted to the great majority of those responsible for carrying out the tragic genocide,” the Christian Democrat Party deputy, Augusto Conte, said of the deadline. Estimates as to how many people would benefit from the effects of the statute of limitations varied.

But in January Argentine human rights groups accused 650 people by name of responsibility for human rights violations. The groups had also asked the courts to investigate another 350 people known only by nicknames used at clandestine detention centres. President Raul Alfonsin proposed the statute of limitations in December, saying it was needed to remove the unending suspicion hanging over the military.

His proposal was rapidly approved by Congress, but a torch-light demonstration against the deadline attracted about, 10,000 people last Friday. Mr Alfonsin, who campaigned for the presidency on a human rights platform, took office in 1983 at the end of eight years of harsh military rule in which more than 9000 people disappeared and thousands died.

Just over a year ago Argentine courts handed

down stiff jail sentences against five former military rulers for running a system of state terror in the so-called "dirty war” against Leftist guerrillas.

It was the first such court action taken in Latin America, where military coups and harsh dictatorships have been common.

As a result, one former military president and an admiral are serving life prison sentences, but .they represent the only convictions on human rights charges since the return to democracy. Proceedings have been started against hundreds of people, but most are now backed up in the Supreme Military Tribunal.

Mr Alfonsin, in calling for the legislation, said Argentina's three-year-old democracy needed to integrate the military into society again. . "It’s no longer enough that the armed forces refrain from carrying out coups,” he said.

Military sources said that in the final hours before the deadline there was considerable concern among military officers at court attempts to bring as many prosecutions as possible before midnight