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during his presidency. This was reversed during the very recent Presidency of Argentina's Néstor Kirchner, himself once a prisoner who was tortured by the dictatorship during Argentina's Dirty War: Retired Torturer Now Lives a Tortured Existence
By CALVIN SIMS
Published: August 12, 1997
BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 11— On his way to a meeting in the tidy Palermo district here last week, Jorge Oscar Ocampo suddenly began shouting and swinging at a blond, baby-faced man who passed him on the street.
''Why don't you torture me now?'' Mr. Ocampo yelled at the man, whom he recognized as Alfredo Astiz, a retired navy captain, who Mr. Ocampo said had beaten and tortured his wife and child during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
''When I saw who it was, despite the fact that he was covering his face, I hit out at him but didn't manage to punch him,'' said Mr. Ocampo, a member of the Peronist party, which the military considered an enemy. ''I did what every other good Argentine would have done.''
It was the second attack last week against Mr. Astiz, who more than any other military man has come to symbolize Argentina's ''dirty war'' of repression, in which as many as 30,000 people were killed or ''disappeared'' at the hands of the security forces. Many of the victims were leftist guerrillas, people believed to be associated with them or others critical of the Government.
Despite the military's public apology last year for ''grave errors'' committed during the dictatorship, Argentina still has not recovered from the hatred of the repression, and many scholars say the issue will remain an open sore on the society for many decades to come.
Whether because of his distinguishing looks or the disturbing crimes that he was charged with committing, Mr. Astiz, 46, has suffered dozens of assaults in recent years by strangers on the street or people who say he tortured them or their relatives.
All military officers and subordinates accused of planning and carrying out the killings, tortures and disappearances of the ''dirty war'' have been pardoned by the Government, and many now walk the streets without fear or incident, mainly because few people can identify them.
Mr. Astiz, whose suspected crimes were widely reported in the press, has never spoken publicly about that era, and associates say he will not do so. Friends in the military say he lives a tortured existence in which he is never at ease for fear that he will be recognized and assaulted.
Early last week, a group of angry teen-agers -- shouting, ''Murderer!'' and ''Son of a whore!'' -- punched, kicked and spat on Mr. Astiz after he showed up at a disco in Gualeguay, in Entre Rios Province in the north.
Two years ago, Alfredo Chavez, a former prisoner at a secret detention center during the military dictatorship, pummeled Mr. Astiz after spotting him on vacation at the Andean ski resort of Bariloche in southern Argentina.
Mr. Astiz sued Mr. Chavez, a municipal worker, but the courts dismissed the case, and the Bariloche City Council declared the former navy captain persona non grata.
Interior Minister Carlos Corach, a Peronist, said last week that while he did not condone the attacks against Mr. Astiz, he sympathized with the assailants and the Government would not provide Mr. Astiz or any other human rights abuser with any extra security. ''Imagine you were tortured or kidnapped during the military dictatorship and suddenly you see your torturer or kidnapper,'' Mr. Corach said.
Mr. Astiz, who is known in Argentina as the ''blond angel of death,'' has been accused of infiltrating human rights groups and kidnapping and killing two French nuns and a Swedish-Argentine teen-ager at the infamous Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires, which was a center of detention and interrogation during military rule.
In 1990 a French court sentenced Mr. Astiz in absentia to life in prison for the 1977 slayings of Sister Alice Domon and Sister Leonie Duquet, two French nuns whose bodies washed up on a beach near Buenos Aires two months after they were taken to the mechanics school for questioning because of their association with the guerrillas.
Though Argentina brought military leaders to trial in the mid-1980's and imprisoned a number of the highest generals, it passed a law that exempted junior officials from prosecution for human rights violations, arguing that they were following orders they could not disobey.
And in 1990 the Government of President Carlos Saul Menem pardoned all military officers who had been jailed, in a calculated move to prevent the army from staging any more coups. More: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/12/world/retired-torturer-now-lives-a-tortured-existence.html~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_FxCl-zDjIOQ/Sge0lrltW4I/AAAAAAAAED4/z6R92tpNPZk/s400/menem-bush.gif
Bush, Menem, and next to the last wife.Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking
by Ana Simo
JUNE 7, 2001. A long-time friend of former U.S. President George H. Bush was arrested today on charges of illegal arms trafficking. If found guilty, he could face a jail term of up to ten years. Only a phone call from the new Bush White House might spare him the indignity, he thinks. But the phones aren't ringing.
The friend in trouble is the former President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, a golfing partner and business benefactor of the elder Bush. He is suspected of having illegally sold 6,500 tons of arms to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995, in violation of international arms embargoes. Menem, who was put under house arrest today by a Buenos Aires federal judge, said in his defense last weekend that the U.S. knew all about the arms sales.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher gave Menem the cold shoulder on Monday. He was unaware, he said, of any action by the U.S. government entailing approval or encouragement of Argentinean arms sales to Croatia. Given how profitable the Menem connection has been for the Bushes, one might imagine Boucher was frostily putting interests of state ahead of the Bush family, until you realize that, with a Bush in the White House, they are essentially one and the same.
In 1988, a few months before Menem was elected for his first term, George W. Bush, the then oilman son of a sitting U.S. President, had tried to pressure the administration of outgoing President Raúl Alfonsín to favor Enron, the Houston-based company, over other, more qualified bidders to build a gas pipeline in Argentina. He was unsuccessful, but the Bushes hit it off with the high-rolling, big-spending Menem from the start. One of Menem's first acts as President was to give Enron a $300-million sweetheart deal on the pipeline project.
The Enron deal triggered a public outcry in Argentina. A congressional inquiry was demanded, and a special prosecutor launched a probe. But after Menem fired him, the probe fizzled. Enron and its founder and CEO, Kenneth Lay, another close friend of the elder Bush, were among the biggest contributors to George W. Bush's presidential campaign, as well as to his two gubernatorial campaigns.
George W. Bush's brother, Neil Bush, also had his fingers in the Argentina pie. He jetted to Buenos Aires for a tennis match with Menem the day after the latter was first elected, in 1989. Earlier, Neil had been involved in a failed plan to drill oil in Argentina, to be financed in part with a $900,000 loan from the Silverado Savings and Loan Bank in Denver, of which he was a director. The S&L collapsed in 1988 amidst a financial scandal, costing U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion.
The elder Bush soon became an assiduous guest of the flamboyant Menem. He was the first U.S. President since Eisenhower to visit Argentina. Over the years, he clocked eight visits to Menem, for what the Buenos Aires daily Página 12 described as "lavish golf parties." Money and politics were discussed, particularly the three Bush investment areas of choice, according to the newspaper Clarín: oil, gas, and casinos.
In 1998, former President Bush asked Menem to grant a gambling license to the Mirage Casino Corporation, triggering yet another public outcry in Argentina. Mirage later contributed $449,000 to the Republican Party. More: http://www.thegully.com/essays/argentina/010607bush_menem.html |
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