Argentine rights trial

ARGENTINA'S former military rulers have gone on trial for kidnappings and murders committed during a co-ordinated crackdown on dissent by South American military regimes.

Former junta leaders Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone joined 23 other people accused of crimes committed under the so-called Condor Plan, during the "dirty war" of the 1970s and 1980s.

Military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia allegedly coordinated their efforts against the left, sharing intelligence, transferring prisoners and killing or causing opposition figures to disappear in secret prisons.

"I am convinced of the existence of the Condor Plan, and the actions of those implicated shows that there was an illicit association to transfer people from one country to another," prosecutor Miguel Angel Osorio told AFP.

Videla, 87, is already serving two life sentences for human rights abuses committed during his military dictatorship, which ran from 1976 to 1983. Dressed in a blue suit and tie, Videla listed impassively as the charges were read out at the start of the trial - his fourth for human rights violations by a brutal military regime blamed for some 30,000 disappearances.

The accused were separated from relatives of the victims by a bullet-proof glass shield.

Security forces used the Condor Plan to pursue political opponents into neighbouring countries and secretly seize them with local support, according to lawyers from rights groups that have pursued those cases in the courts for 14 years.

Among the nearly 100 such cases highlighted by the trial are those of Horacio Campiglia and Monica Susana Pinos de Binstock, Argentines who were kidnapped in 1980 and disappeared.

Lawyers allege they were picked up by Argentine intelligence agents at Rio de Janeiro's international airport and wound up in a clandestine detention centre in Buenos Aires, never to be seen again.

Another case is that of Maria Claudia Garcia de Gelman, who was 19 years old and seven months pregnant when she was kidnapped in Buenos Aires by Uruguayan intelligence agents and transferred to Montevideo.

She gave birth in Montevideo's military hospital and later disappeared. Her daughter, Macarena, was illegally given to the family of a police officer, and did not discover her true identity until 2000 at the age of 23.

Among the most notorious victims of the Condor Plan are said to be former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, who was assassinated in Washington; Chilean general Carlos Prats, murdered in Buenos Aires; and Uruguayan politicians Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz, killed in Buenos Aires.

Osorio said the prosecution will show an FBI cable, sent after the Letelier assassination, that he said confirms the Condor Plan's existence and explains that the objective is "to pursue the opposition and help the different governments in the region with intelligence and logistics in any of their territories."

The trial is expected to last two years because of the complexity of the case.

(2013-03-06/theaustralian)