Flight into Danger: How a Suspected Torturer
Was Snared in a
Landmark for Human Rights
By Tim Gaynor
Independent
June 30, 2003
He is a silver-haired exiled Argentinian businessman
who lived a quiet life in Mexico, running the country's national car
registry. But yesterday the former naval officer was bundled into a
bullet-proof vest, handcuffed and flown in a Spanish air force Boeing
707 across the Atlantic to face genocide and terrorism charges in Spain.
Ricardo Cavallo, accused of being one of the worst
torturers of Argentina's "dirty war" between 1976 and 1983, exhausted
all avenues of appeal last week, when Mexico's Supreme Court agreed that
he could be extradited to Spain.
Mr Cavallo had lived untroubled for years in Mexico
until a newspaper challenged his identity and he was detained in 2000 in
the Mexican resort of Cancun, on his way to Argentina. He had been
accused by five former political prisoners of being a former "dirty war"
intelligence agent who went by the aliases "Serpico" and "Marcelo".
The case has been hailed by human rights activists as a
landmark. He will become the first person to face trial for crimes not
committed in the country of jurisdiction. Mr Cavallo will therefore be
unprotected by an amnesty in his native country offered to those accused
of repression under the dictatorship of General Leopoldo Galtieri.
Up to 30,000 people were killed or "disappeared" in the
Argentine military's war against leftist guerrillas and their
sympathisers. Many were tortured, drugged and in some cases thrown from
aircraft into the River Plate or the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr Cavallo, 51, is accused of having worked as a member
of a crack operational unit in the notorious School of Naval Mechanics
in Buenos Aires, a secret torture centre under General Galtieri.
Accompanied by officers from Interpol and the Spanish
police, Mr Cavallo was driven from Madrid's Torrejon de Ardoz air base
in a convoy of police vans to appear at a specially convened session of
the National Court yesterday morning, where he was arraigned by the
crusading Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon.
Mr Garzon campaigned unsuccessfully to bring the former
Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet to trial in Spain five years
ago. But in the Cavallo case, the extradition request was filed under
the terms of a bilateral extradition treaty, rather than an
international rights agreement, which led to the failed effort to bring
Pinochet to trial in 1998. At yesterday's five-minute session, during
which the bespectacled defendant declined to testify, Mr Garzon handed
over a 200-page report in which Mr Cavallo is accused of 200 cases of
disappearances, 120 of kidnappings and 100 of torture dating from the
"dirty war".
He will be tried in Spain for his alleged involvement
in the torture of Thelma Jara, and for the murder of the Spaniards
Monica Jauregui and Elba Delia Aldaya, and will face further charges of
falsifying documents, according to the Spanish media.
Manuel Olle, a lawyer representing the victims, said
the examining magistrate would call for the testimony of Marcelo
Hernandez, an Argentinian who was tortured at the School of Naval
Mechanics. Mr Hernandez, who was kept and tortured for two years at the
centre, said: "I never dreamt of a day like this. The type of men who
have been responsible for many deaths cannot be free."
As the prison van rolled up to the court, a group of
some 100 Argentinian human rights activists, exiles and torture victims
chanted, waving placards with the message "Universal Justice for the
Victims of Torture" and "Extradition for the 48 Argentinian Authors of
Genocide".
"It's a historic moment for all humanity," Ricardo
Hausdorff, an Argentinian trades union and human rights activist, said
outside the courthouse. "At long last a precedent has been set so that
justice can reach any point in the world."
As excited demonstrators jostled with the police, Mr
Hausdorff, 45, said exiled Argentinians regarded the detention as "a
positive first step. The names of a further 48 Argentinians have come to
light [in investigations of rights abuses] and we want them to be
brought to book."
For some gathered in the heat outside the courthouse in
central Madrid, the arraignment raised hope that it would challenge the
longstanding impunity enjoyed by former torturers and dirty war
functionaries within Argentina.
The documentary film maker Alcides Chiasa, 55, told The
Independent he was tortured in Argentina's notorious Pozo de Quilmes
detention centre "every six to eight hours" for a period of one month
after he was kidnapped by military authorities in 1977. "They attached
electrodes to me and also gave me 'the submarine' - a technique where
they hold you underwater until you nearly drown - and they kidnapped my
wife and father," he said.
"Cavallo's arraignment opens the door to justice and a
full civil investigation in Argentina, so that the families of the
disappeared can finally bury them," said Mr Chiasa as he waited for the
van bearing Mr Cavallo to arrive at the court. "It gives us the hope
that, after so many decades, we are finally going to see justice."
A spokesman for the National Court said Mr Cavallo had
denied all knowledge of the crimes for which he was charged, and refused
to sign a court document setting out his rights. Mr Garzon then
adjourned the court until later in the day to give Mr Cavallo time to
read the indictment against him.
Mr Cavallo, who was described as calm and collected at
the hearing, has acknowledged that he was in Argentina's military, but
he has denied involvement in torture. He was kept in a Madrid jail last
night.
The Mexican Supreme Court, which issued its decision on
10 June, threw out torture charges against Mr Cavallo because the
statute of limitations had expired.
Mr Garzon, 48, is one of six investigating judges for
Spain's National Court. His function is to investigate the cases that
are assigned to him by the court, gathering evidence and evaluating
whether the case should be brought to trial. He does not try the cases.
The judge, who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize
in 2002, has launched formal investigations into human rights abuses
committed under the former military dictatorships of Chile and
Argentina, and has brought charges against officials for the deaths of
Spaniards in both countries.
Mr Cavallo is one of 98 military and civilian figures
of the Argentine regime indicted by Judge Garzon last year. But most of
them live in Argentina, where they are protected by the local amnesty
laws.
Mr Garzon has been in charge of some of Spain's biggest
cases, involving drug trafficking, corruption, the Basque terrorist
group Eta and the GAL, a shady official hit-squad formed to fight Eta.
THE CLOSING NET
HISSÉNE HABRE
Known as "Africa's Pinochet", the exiled ruler of Chad
was indicted on charges of torture and crimes against humanity by a
court in Senegal in February 2000. In March 2001 the case was dropped
after a ruling that Senegal could not prosecute crimes beyond its
borders. Buthe might still be tried in Belgium, which is seeking his
extradition.
AUGUSTO PINOCHET
In October 1998 the former Chilean dictator was
arrested in London for extradition to Spain to face charges over the
murder of Spanish nationals during his rule from 1973 to 1990. The
extradition was stopped after it was ruled he was medically unfit to
stand trial. He returned to Chile in March 2000, where he has been
declared mentally unfit for trial.
ARIEL SHARON
Israel's Prime Minister has been accused of
responsibility for the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and
Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, when he was Defence Minister.In
February the Belgian Supreme Court decided to allow a case to be brought
against Mr Sharon. Planned changes to Belgian law mean the case will not
go ahead.
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
On trial at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague,
Slobodan Milosevic is the first serving leader to be indicted for war
crimes. The former Yugoslav president was arrested in April 2002 - two
years after his indictment - and is accused of genocide and crimes
against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.
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