Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of torture and disappearances and identified the places where they had
occurred.
NeverAgain
placed the number of “known” people who dis-
appeared at 8,961. Based on this voluminous evidence, the Ministry of
Justice identified 670 members of the former military government for
prosecution. The human rights organizations, however, rebelled at the
notion of such limited liability. They alleged that the true number of
disappeared amounted to 19,000, more than twice the official govern-
ment figure. By 1986, moreover, surviving victims and relatives of the
disappeared had brought independent actions against approximately
1,700 officers in the civil courts. The accusations now reached deeply
into the ranks of the junior officers and noncommissioned officers who
had carried out the orders.
The first trial of the nine generals who had served in the three
military juntas from 1976 to 1983 indicated that the process would
be long and divisive. Only five of the nine were convicted in an eight-
month-long trial. The former military presidents, Generals Jorge Videla,
Leopoldo Galtieri, and Roberto Viola, and three others received jail
sentences. Three others were absolved. Human rights activists decried
the “leniency” of the court decisions.
Alfonsín's advisers worried that the judicial process was taking too
long and going too deeply into the lower ranks of the officer corps, so
they passed two laws restricting prosecutions. One law stipulated that
all new charges had to be filed within 60 days to be valid. The second
piece of legislation, the Due Obedience Law, stipulated that no person-
nel below the rank of colonel could be prosecuted since they had just
been following orders. With these laws two branches of government,
the powerful executive and the subservient Congress, had in effect
conspired to further limit the autonomy of the third and weakest, the
judiciary.
Despite government actions favorable to their interests, the officer
corps remained unrepentant. “I didn't come here to defend myself,” said
Admiral Emilio Massera. “No one has to defend himself for having won a
just war, and the war against terrorism
was
a just war” (Lewis 2002, 219).
Junior officers such as Massera's subordinate at the Navy Mechanics
School, Captain Alfredo Astiz, resented having to present themselves in
civilian courts even though Alfonsín's Due Obedience Law would even-
tually absolve them from further prosecution. Moreover, the military
recoiled at the lenient treatment given to terrorists. Montonero leader
Mario Firmenich received a long jail sentence, but other guerrillas con-
victed of killing police and military officers, and sometimes their family
members, escaped punishment altogether. Some former members of the
