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Thursday October 25, 2007

Remnants of terror

Claudia Florentín, BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, September 25, 2006

The uncertainties surrounding the disappearance of Jorge Julio López, a key eyewitness in the trial Taxi Heathrow Airport that sentenced former police commisioner Miguel Etchecolatz to life in prison for his role in the torture of political prisoners during Argentina's military dictatorship, have led to marches, protests and initiatives at the highest levels of the national and local governments. Human rights organisations have met with the Minister of Interior, Aníbal Fernández, and with the governor of the Province of  Buenos Aires, Felipe Solá, who also paid a visit to López's family. The governor announced that all provincial police officers "who in one way or another had been linked to clandestine centers of detention and that were still in active duty" would be placed at the disposal of investigations.

Likewise, Nilda Eloy, another key witness in the trial against Etchecolatz, was given police protection following an episode of telephone harassment last Saturday. The national government announced that the search for López is being carried out actively in all jurisdictions, including the Federal Police and the Gendarmería (responsible for national borders).

On 29 June Jorge Julio López testified about what he saw, heard or suffered during his abduction and passage through several Clandestine Centers of Detention (CCD) of the "Camps Circuit". López cried on that day before the judges as he recalled that he actually saw, through a small opening in the door of the Pozo de Arana, how Etchecolatz gave the shooting orders for the couple Patricia Dell’Orto and Ambrosio De Marco. “She was pleading for them not to kill her, saying she wanted to raise her babies”. López told the court that he knew her from her social involvement in the poor city quarters: “She never placed her hand on a gun –he declared–, she devoted herself to taking care of kids and feeding them. These women were worth gold, and they killed them".

López was able to clearly identify and recognize Etchecolatz as the leader of the squad that kidnapped him in October 1976, someone he identifies as "a serial killer, a man without compassion". The accounts of the currently missing key witness made it possible to convict Etchecolatz. The disappearance of Julio López is a cause for concern at national level since this type of event harks back to the terrible times of the military dictatorship that started in 1976. They also seem to confirm that powerful groups associated with that time's terror campaign may still be active; groups that belong to a time that is now over, but from which some truths still have to be revealed. 

The life sentence handed down to Miguel Etchecolatz for torture, a ruling from the Federal Tribunal in La Plata, found wide repercussion among jurists, members of human rights organisations and international specialists.

Source: Página 12 and news agencies