U.S.

Knew Dirty War Junta Was Stealing Babies; Ex-State

Dept. Official Testifies at Trial of Military Officials
The Washington Times (Washington, DC), January 30, 2012

U.S. Knew Dirty War Junta Was Stealing

Babies; Ex-State Dept. Official Testifies
at Trial of Military Officials

Byline: Kelly Hearn, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

BUENOS AIRES -- The U.S. government knew that Argentina's military junta in
the 1970s and '80s was stealing babies from leftist political prisoners who were
jailed or killed in torture centers, a former U.S. State Department official has
testified.

Elliott Abrams, U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian
affairs during that period, testified Thursday via videoconference in the trial of for-
mer military officials here accused of the kidnapping scheme.

We were aware of this situation, Mr. Abrams said. "And we believed we weren't
talking about one or two children, or one or two officers who had taken children.

We thought there was a pattern or a plan because a lot of people were being jailed
or killed. It seemed to us that the military government had decided that at least
some of the children of those people would be given to other families.
From 1976 to 1983, a time known as the Dirty War, the junta carried out a cam-
paign of repression against communist militants, students, trade unionists and
Marxist guerrillas. It is said to have killed, or disappeared, 30,000 people.

Amnesty laws that had protected the officials were repealed in the early 2000s,
prompting dozens of trials.

Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina's president from 1976 to 1981, and Reynaldo
Bignone, president from 1982 to 1983, are on trial with other former security offi-
cials. They are accused of stealing 35 children, though a group of activist grand-
mothers claims some 500 babies were taken.

Mr. Abrams' testimony countered the defendants' claim that no plan for taking chil-
dren existed.

Alan Iud, a lawyer who questioned the former State Department official on behalf
of the grandmothers' group, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, said Mr. Abrams'
testimony exceeded our expectations.

Mr. Iud said it proved that Bignone knew of the kidnappings and refused to return
the children to their families.

The lawyer also said it showed that the systematic appropriation of children was a
high-level diplomatic matter between the U.S. and Argentina.

In December 2010, Videla was sentenced to life in a civilian prison for the deaths of
31 prisoners following his coup d'etat, and Bignone was sentenced to 25 years for
his role in kidnappings, torture and murders.

During his testimony, Mr. Abrams read from a diplomatic cable he wrote on Dec. 3,
1982.
The document, declassified by the U.S. government in December, summarized a
conversation he had with Argentina's then-ambassador to the U.S., Lucio Alberto
Garcia del Solar, at the Jockey Club of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the District.

I raised with the ambassador the question of children in this context, such as chil-
dren born to prisoners or children taken from their families during the Dirty War,
Mr. Abrams read from the cable. "While the disappeared were dead, these children
were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem.

The ambassador agreed completely and had already made this point to his foreign
minister and the president. They had not rejected his view but had pointed on the
problem, for example, of taking children from their adoptive parents.

Mr. Abrams testified that U.S. officials thought the kidnapping scheme was a very
significant human rights problem. In one way, the most significant human rights
problem because these people were alive; it was an ongoing problem.

It still is, according to the grandmothers, who report that more than 100 kidnapping
victims have endured painful reckonings as young adults.

Victoria Montenegro, who grew up under the name Maria Sol, consented to take a
DNA test only to discover that the man who had called himself her father, a former
military colonel, was directly responsible for killing her biological parents.

In a telephone interview, she told The Washington Times that she had been treated
as botin de guerra, or spoils of war.

Ms. Montenegro and others here support efforts by U.S. Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey,
New York Democrat, to persuade President Obama to declassify CIA, FBI and Pen-
tagon files under an executive order.
Experts believe the records could help identify more kidnapping victims and prove
the chain of command responsible for human rights violations.

Carlos Osorio of George Washington University said that classified information

gleaned by military attaches, CIA agents and officers of U.S. intelligence agencies,
who were tasked at the time with gathering human rights information in Argentina,
could help serve the purpose of justice.

In a way this is like Argentina's Nuremberg trials, said Kevin Alexander, a German
student of international relations who observed a portion of the trial.

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication information: Article title: U.S. Knew Dirty War Junta Was Stealing Babies; Ex-State Dept. Official
Testifies at Trial of Military Officials. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Washington Times
(Washington, DC). Publication date: January 30, 2012. Page number: A11. © News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale Group.

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