When processing fifteen repressors, Judge Daniel Rafecas analyzed the functioning of the centers and clandestine detention equated with torture those sites.
"out of bondage If you had asked me, 'I was tortured badly?", I would have answered:' Yes, three months without stopping '. " The phrase is part of the testimony of Michael D'Agostino to the National Commission on Disappeared Persons (CONADEP) and resume, for Judge Daniel Rafecas, the central thesis of the fault which yesterday indicted fifteen repressors: the living conditions and death in secret detention centers of the dictatorship were themselves acts of torture. " Regard certain forms of abuse as mere techniques of stress or illness and claim that certain harsh treatment are intrinsic to the deprivation of liberty, and justify them on grounds such as the captive insurance, military necessity or the struggle against subversion, implies the use of euphemisms seeking to make torture permissible simply because to call otherwise, "said the magistrate.
Rafecas repressors processed yesterday to fifteen members of the task forces operating in clandestine centers Atlético Bank and Olympians. As to those sites, which operated at various times, acted the same street gangs and were "changed" the elements of torture and even some victims, the judge looked at as a unit. In an extensive 850-page ruling, the judge indicted cops Samuel Miara, Roberto Antonio Rosa, Julio Simon, Juan Antonio Del Cerro, Oscar Augusto Rolon, Raúl González, Eduardo Kalinec, Juan Carlos Falcón, Eufemio Uballes Jorge Luis Juan Donocick, Gustavo Adolfo Eklund, the former prison service officer Juan Carlos Avena and gendarmes Víctor Guillermo Cardozo, Luis Méndez, Eugenio Perez Apesetgui. It also ordered embargoes ranging from 500 thousand dollars and 3 million 500 thousand, according to the number of events for which each defendant was charged, and the lack of merit for the NCO Arlindo Gendarmerie Benito Luna. But above all, the judge elaborated on the features and the "daily life" of the sites that were hosted missing. Visited during the investigation, together with survivors, the remainder of Atletico, The Bank and The Olympian.
moral collapse
By analyzing the existence and operation of underground facilities, the judge found that "the multiplication of these places around the country and its permanence in time reflects the image of the moral collapse of society and At the same time, the failure of the supposed progress of civilization of a nation. " Rafecas said, quoting Hannah Arendt, that these sites were designed "not only to degrade human beings and eventually eliminate them physically, but also to 'transform the human personality into a mere thing'."
support of the concept of equivalence between the illegal deprivation of liberty and torture, the court heard dozens of testimonies from survivors and analyzed 161 cases of kidnappings. In the letter he signed yesterday, described the different types of conditions to which the victims were subjected Atletico, The Bank and The Olympian and listed: Septation, suppression of identity (allocation of a number), shackled, during captivity in "pipes" o "leoneras" (celdas angostas y de tabiques bajos en las que las personas estaban con los ojos vendados y cadenas con candados en los pies), supresión de toda forma de comunicación humana, castigos permanentes, la ubicua amenaza de ser torturado o asesinado, escasa y deficiente alimentación, falta de higiene y progresivo deterioro sanitario, exposición a la desnudez y otros padecimientos de connotación sexual y la imposición de sesiones de tormentos físicos. Como ya estableció la Conadep : "Desde el momento de su secuestro, la víctima perdía todos los derechos ; privada de toda comunicación con el mundo exterior, confinada en lugares desconocidos, sometida a suplicios infernales, ignorante de su destino mediate or immediate, capable of being thrown into the river or the sea, with cement blocks on his feet, or reduced to ashes; beings were not yet kept things but attributes of the human creature sensitivity to torment, memory of his mother or his son or his wife, the endless shame for the violation in public, things that not only possessed by the supreme infinite anguish and dread, but also, and perhaps because of it, keeping in some corner of his soul a wild hope. "
The equation between the kidnapping and torture was also recently subscribed by the Federal Chamber of La Plata to expand the prosecution of former Director of Investigations Buenos Aires Police Miguel Etchecolatz. The application of this new legal standard involves a worsening in the penalty for the oppressors and make less difficult the task of collecting evidence, since in many cases there is no evidence to indicate with certainty that a particular victim he was given the baton, although was a common practice in the clandestine prisons. In addition, binds to a specific way to analyze and understand the methodology of state terrorism. Rafecas
also alluded to the "particularly brutal anti-Semitic" repressors of Atletico, The Bank and The Olympian. Among several examples, he mentioned Monica Brule, "who was tortured while being blind and being two months pregnant. "The woman said she took her twice to the" theater "and he remembered that at the foot of the bed was Clavel and that torturers become increasingly savaged her for both because the family was Jewish and because he did not cry, which exasperated. Clavel was the alias of the curator Rosa, one of the accused by the ruling, who was known to be connected with the judge Norberto Oyarbide when he was denounced by protect a network of brothels.
To Rafecas, if not understood the conditions of "life" in clandestine centers and practices of torture "would contribute to the mistaken idea that what missed only military power was a bureaucratic act of making available to the Executive Branch of the captives, when in fact the 'legalization' does not exist, because in this way building a secluded area where everything was possible, where the absolute terror could flow without giving notice or tell anyone what happened there, in addition, it was not humanly explicable either by the protagonists and ideologues of the slaughter. "
Finally, the judge looked at some common characteristics of clandestine centers of dictatorship and Nazi concentration camps and used a reflection of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman on the need to seek truth and justice that considered appropriate to apply to crimes of state terrorism: "There is reason to be afraid because we now know that we live in a society that made the Holocaust possible and that there was nothing in it that could stop. For these reasons alone it is necessary to study the lessons of the Holocaust. In this study there is much more than a million tribute killed, that reckoning with the murderers or moral wound healing ulceration still passive and silent witnesses . Obviously, neither this way or another, even deeper, involving no guarantee against the return of mass murderers or passive viewers. But without such a study would not know what would be likely or unlikely that such a return. "
Atletico
to Olympus Athletic Club Atletico or worked during 1976 and until December 1977 in the basement of the Supplies Division Federal Police, in Paseo Colon and San Juan. The building had to be abandoned because it passed under the plot of the highway May 25. The repressive, and many detainees were moved temporarily to a farm located two blocks away from the general highway Ricchieri Belt Road (The Bank), which then ran the XI Women's Police Brigade of the Province of Buenos Aires. Then, the center began operating in the Automotive Division of the Federal Police (pictured) at Floresta. In this site I called Olympus and housed prisoners until late 1979. Intelligence in a room a poster read: "Welcome to the Olympus of the gods."
of wheels and other
In the resolution, the judge ruled that all persons who were active in the field of detention, whether they be linked to the guard or detention of detainees, whether to intervene in interrogation or was a member of the Task Force, was conducting "an essential contribution to the maintenance of victims under a regime of establishing the imposition of torment beyond most timely criminal responsibility properly allocable to those who had more direct interventions in the application of torture. "He referred to the analysis made by the philosopher Hannah Arendt on Adolf Eichmann's role in the Holocaust." We hear the claims of the defense in the sense that it was just a 'little wheel' in the machinery of the Final Solution, as well as the prosecution claims, he thought he had found the real engine of that machine. The court acknowledged in its ruling that the crime committed could be judged solely by the use of a huge bureaucratic organization that will serve government resources. But as the activities in question constituted a crime, all the wheels of the machine, however slight, were transformed from the point of view of the court, authors, ie in humans. If the defendant relies on the fact that man did not act as such but as an officer whose functions had been carried by any other person, this is equivalent to the attitude of the offender who, relying on crime statistics, so declaring that he only statistically and did what I had planned and accidental character which was he who had done and not any other, because, ultimately, somebody had to do. "
Men
time
not many who were indicted yesterday Rafecas are familiar characters. The deputy Samuel Miara is the appropriator of twins Reggiardo Tolosa, located by the Grandmothers of Plaza May 1985. Juan Antonio del Cerro, alias Colors, and Julio Simón, known as El Turco Julián, recounted his experience as torturers before the television cameras and the two repressors are involved in the case of Poblete family, which Federal Judge Gabriel Cavallo declared the unconstitutionality of laws and due obedience endpoint. Roberto Rosa, aka Clavel, became famous for its connection with Judge Norberto Oyarbide. But most of the names mentioned in this bug might go unnoticed. They had no great responsibility in the chain of command (the heads of areas and zones have already been processed). Were kidnappers, executors. As the judge Rafecas, were "race officials, professionals, trained within the historic institutions of our country and served as guards and torturers." "Would it not be happier," Bauman cited the judge-if he could prove that all they did was crazy, asks Raoul Hilberg, the great historian of the Holocaust. However, this is precisely what it is unable to demonstrate . The truth is out the light does not provide any comfort. The most likely not make anyone happy. They were men of his time and polite. This is the crux of the issue every time we reflect on the meaning of Western civilization after Auschwitz. Our evolution has been faster than our understanding, we can no longer assume that we know really our social institutions, our bureaucratic structures and our technologies. "
Victoria Ginzberg
page 12. Buenos Aires 22 October
2005
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