Dirty war officer on trial for genocide
A former Argentinian naval officer, who has admitted throwing 30 drugged, naked dissidents off aircraft into the Atlantic during his country’s Dirty War, went on trial for genocide in Spain today.
Adolfo Scilingo, 58, is the first person to be tried in Spain for crimes against humanity in another nation.
He said nothing intelligible in the Madrid court, only mumbling when a judge spoke to him, and spent most of the session wrapped in a dark blanket, grimacing and covering his eyes with clenched fists.
His weakened condition delayed the start to the trial’s first session and forced an early adjournment.
After the late start and an interruption – both times for court doctors to examine Scilingo, who has been on a hunger strike since mid-December – all that was accomplished was a reading of excerpts from testimony in 1997 when Scilingo told an investigative magistrate in Spain that he had thrown the dissidents into the ocean during Argentina’s dictatorship.
Scilingo voluntarily went to Spain in 1997 to give that testimony before National Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who since the late 1990s has spearheaded a probe into human rights violations by military regimes in Argentina and Chile.
Scilingo did not have immunity, and Garzon stunned him by jailing him. Scilingo later withdrew his confession.
He apparently – and erroneously – thought that in Spain, he could gain protected-witness status, according to lawyers for victims of the 1976-83 Argentine dictatorship.
Scilingo walked into the court today looking weak and pale, with two policemen holding him up by the arms. However, a court-appointed doctor who examined him twice said Scilingo had arrived at the building walking on his own.
In the courtroom, “his attitude is voluntary and he is aware of what he is doing,” said the doctor,.
“Scilingo wanted people to feel sorry for him,” said Carlos Slepoy, a leading human rights lawyer who represents relatives of Argentine victims. “When I saw him today, I was thinking of the people he threw alive to the sea, drugged and weak, just like him today. The difference is that the people he threw were not acting.
“I’ve felt a mixture of sadness and anger,” he said.
Scilingo’s is the latest case in a growing body of international law that allows courts in one country to judge human rights crimes allegedly committed in another, regardless of the suspect’s nationality.
In a landmark ruling in 1998, Spain’s National Court said crimes against humanity, such as genocide, can be tried in this country regardless of where the crime is committed and the nationality of suspects.
Scilingo was one of the first officers to come forward and openly admit to taking part in atrocities as part of the junta’s brutal crackdown on dissent.
Officially, more than 13,000 people disappeared during Argentina’s crackdown on dissidents. Some human rights groups claim there were as many as 30,000 victims.
