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STOLEN BABIES: Argentina Convicts Two Military Dictators

In Unprecedented Testimony, Former US Assistant Secretary of State Confirmed Military Kidnappings of Children of Disappeared Political Prisoners in the 1970's

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 383

Posted - July 5, 2012

For more information contact:
Carlos Osorio - 202/994-7000
cosorio@gwu.edu

The Sentence

Robo de bebés: condenaron a 50 años de prisión a Jorge Rafael Videla
Centro de Información Judicial, July 5, 2012

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Francisco Peregil, El País, June 27, 2012


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Washington, D.C., July 5, 2012 –An Argentine tribunal today convicted two former military leaders for their roles in the kidnapping and theft of dozens of babies of executed and disappeared political prisoners during the dictatorship. Drawing on critical evidence provided from the United States, the court sentenced General Rafael Videla to 50 years and General Reynaldo Bignone to 15 years in prison for crimes that epitomized the vicious human rights abuses during the military regime that governed Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

The "Tribunal Oral Federal N° 6" handed down the verdict after a review of documentation that included a memorandum of conversation, written by former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Elliott Abrams, that proved the clandestine program to steal the babies of political prisoners was known at the highest levels of the regime. In his memo, dated December 3, 1982, Abrams recounted a meeting with the military's ambassador to Washington: "I raised with the Ambassador the question of children… born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the dirty war… The Ambassador agreed completely and had already made this point to his [Argentine] foreign minister and president…"

The trial, pursued by the Association of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, was based on the cases of 35 children, now adults, who have been identified through DNA testing as sons and daughters of disappeared victims of the dirty war. The Grandmothers estimate that more than 500 children were captured along with their parents or born in captivity; after their parents were executed, many were raised by security officers' families who hid their true identities. More than 100 of the children have been identified.

This is not the first time that Videla and Bignone have been put on trial for crimes committed during the dictatorship. Both are currently serving life sentences for human rights abuses. Argentina's National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP) originally documented 9,089 cases of people disappeared by the regime. Subsequent research using reports from the secret police battalion 601 raises the total of the dead and disappeared to about 22,000. Human rights organizations estimate that this number is closer to 30,000.

The Abrams memorandum of conversation was among thousands of records on human rights in Argentina declassified by the Department of State in 2002, but it had significant sections redacted [See the redacted memo here]. With the National Security Archive's encouragement, the Grandmothers formally petitioned the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires to declassify a full version of the memcon. In "a remarkable move," according to Carlos Osorio who directs the Archive's Southern Cone Documentation project, the Department of State released an un-censored version of the memorandum of conversation last December.

"This is a wonderful example of how declassification serves the purposes of justice," Osorio said. "We welcome and congratulate the initiative of the U.S. ambassador and Department of State to support the Abuelas de la Plaza De Mayo and provide evidence for this trial."

The document proved critical in the trial, according to Alan Iud, lead lawyer for the Grandmothers. "The document is key for it demonstrates that the last President  of the military dictatorship General Bignone knew of the military policy to snatch the children and knew of their fate " he said. "The release of the full document prevented the defense from arguing that the redacted sections of the document may have contained information that diminished the significance of the essence of declassified parts," he added.

In a virtually unprecedented move, on January 26, 2012, Elliott Abrams provided formal testimony to the court on his meeting with the Argentine ambassador in 1982. He confirmed the authenticity of the document and offered further details about the Argentine military's policy on the kidnapped children.

Abrams testified that the Department of State was aware that "we were not talking about one or two children, or one or two officers who had taken children. We thought there was a pattern or plan."

He later went on to say that the kidnapped children were "in one way, the most significant human rights problem, because these children were alive. This was an ongoing problem." [See clips from his testimony here. Find the transcript here]

As the trial concluded, Osorio called on the CIA, the Defense Department and the FBI to search their secret files for additional documentation related to the disappeared, and their children, in Argentina. The National Security Archive, he said, would press the Obama Administration to declassify such records, to advance the cause of human rights and "the right of the Abuelas to finally know the fates of their children and of their grandchildren."




DOCUMENTS

Document 1

Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, December 3, 1982 [redacted version]

Dec 3, 1982

Source: Argentina Declassification Project, August 2002

By the time Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Elliott Abrams met with Argentina's ambassador to Washington, Lucio Alberto Garcia del Solar, in late 1982, the military regime was completely discredited. Gen. Videla's successor, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, had led Argentina into the debacle of the Falklands war—the U.S. had secretly sided with the British. The defeat cost the regime whatever remaining domestic support it had. The call for an accounting of the disappeared was broadly debated among the media, and society at large. General Reynaldo Bignone had replaced Galtieri as a transitional figure to hand power to civilians. The Department of State had recently received a delegation of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo who presented their case about the hundreds of children stolen from the disappeared and secretly transferred to security officers to raise as their own, "adopted," children.

This redacted version of the memo of the conversation between Abrams and Garcia del Solar was declassified in 2002 as part of a special declassification of human rights documents on Argentina initiated by the State Department during the Clinton administration. It reveals that Abrams had been briefed on the issue of the disappeared children and explicitly addressed the issue. "I raised with the Ambassador the question of children… born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the dirty war. While the disappeared were dead, these children were still alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem." According to the memcon, "The Ambassador agreed completely and had already made this point to his foreign minister and president…" but del Solar also stated that the problem is "taking these children from adoptive parents."

 

Document 2

Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, December 3, 1982 [unredacted version]

Dec 3, 1982

Source: Department of State Special Release, December 2011

In preparation for the trial of General Videla and General Bignone as accessories to the kidnapping and theft of the missing children of political prisoners, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo asked the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Vilma Socorro Martínez, to obtain the full declassification of the document, in hopes that it would provide further evidence for the prosecution. On December 22, 2011, the State Department released the entire document. The redacted sections turned out not to provide additional information on the disappeared children, but having the full document facilitated its introduction as evidence in the trial.

 

Document 3

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), "Forwarding of Spanish Documents," March 25, 1976.

Mar 25, 1976

Source: Southern Cone Documentation Project FOIA Request

The day after the Argentine military coup, the U.S. defense attaché in Buenos Aires forwarded to Washington two Spanish language documents entitled "Philosophy" and "Bio of Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla. " A leader of the coup, Videla described "The historical justification of the Armed Forces intervention in the national process…" and "[T]he guiding ideas – the Philosophy - that support this intervention and its operational modalities.…"

In a revealing section, Videla stated that "the current situation in the country is mismanagement, administrative chaos, venality, but also the existence of currents of public opinion or political beliefs which are deeply rooted, with a working class outside the mainstream… with a church alarmed by the process but still willing to report any excess against human dignity…"

 

Document 4

Department of State – President Videla: An Alternative View," November 19, 1977

Nov 19, 1977

Source: National Archives. Record Group 59.

Although the Carter Administration raised the profile of human rights violations in Latin America, by the end of 1977 U.S. officials decided to engage General Videla as the "Moderate" within the military dictatorship with whom they could work. In this briefing paper drafted two days before Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's visit to Buenos Aires, however, the Department of State makes the following assessment of the leader the U.S. has engaged: "A common view has been that President Videla would gradually but effectively move to improve the human rights situation in Argentina… If these views appeared probable when general Videla assumed the presidency in March, 1976, a year and a half later, they are increasingly difficult to support." The assessment continued:

"Videla probably has good instincts on human rights, but several fundamental factors are preventing him from taking effective action:

  • He adheres to the ‘clandestine war' doctrine, which argues that subversion must be countered with illegal measures. He also agrees that this illegal war be waged in a decentralized manner, with local captains and commanders acting largely on their own. This makes it impossible for the top generals, including the junta, to effectively control the security forces – but does provide the junta members with plausible deniability.
  • Videla fails to make a sharp distinction between terrorism and dissent. The loose application of the term ‘subversive' to the government's enemies has encouraged the security forces to strike not just at terrorists but a wide range of civilian opinion. Certainly less than half of the prisoners and disappeared persons (estimated by human rights groups at 15,000) were active terrorists; some estimates place the figure at under 15%."
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