(Washington, DC) - Human Rights Watch today welcomed the Argentine judicial decision to invalidate amnesty laws that have prevented the prosecution of atrocities committed during the country's military dictatorship.
By declaring the "Due Obedience" and "Full Stop" laws to be "unconstitutional and invalid," federal judge Gabriel Cavallo has taken an important step toward ending nearly two decades of impunity for crimes against humanity. "The court's decision reflects the international consensus that the perpetrators of the most heinous atrocities cannot be shielded by sweeping amnesties," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch. "It means that the wall of impunity in Argentina is crumbling."
The Argentine military dictatorship, which held power from 1976-1983, was responsible for crimes against humanity, including systematic torture, murder and "disappearance." The 1984 report of the Argentine truth commission names 8,961 people who were "disappeared" under the military dictatorship, noting that this figure is not exhaustive.
A number of high-level officials, including members of the military junta, were criminally prosecuted and convicted in the 1980s for these abuses. However, the vast majority of military perpetrators were covered by the country's amnesty laws, while pardons issued by then-President Menem in 1989 and 1990 freed those who had been convicted.
Eleven former military officials, including the president of the first military junta, have recently been arrested in conjunction with prosecutions involving "disappeared" children, a category of crimes not covered by the amnesty laws. The case currently being adjudicated by Judge Cavallo involves an eight-month old girl, Claudia Victoria Poblete, who was allegedly detained by the military together with her parents, Gertrudis María Hlaczik and José Liborio Poblete, in 1978. Although the defendants in the present case could be prosecuted for stealing the child, until now they could not be prosecuted for the disappearance and torture of her parents.
"The decision to void the amnesty will further hopes of seeing that justice is done in this case, and others like it," Vivanco said.
