16. MPM, No 9, August 1985.
17. Idem.
18. "Decimos', No 4.
19. Idem.
20. Idem. International Viewpoint 9 December 1985
The military juntas on trial Interview with former political prisoner WE PUBLISH below an interview with Flavio Koutzii, the Brazilian revolutionary who was detained in Argentina from 1975 to 1979. He is currently working on a book about the trials of the Argentinian military command. He has already published a work on the conditions inside Argentinian gaols. The interview was conducted by Daniel Jebrac in August 1985 in Sao Paulo.
ARGENTINA authority; this was the setting up the the National Commission of the Disappeared People (CONADEP).
This body was made up of notables, and presided over by Ernesto Sabato, who gave his name to the report it produced.
The CONADEP had as its objective to inquire into the facts and to summarize them into a report. This is why the first reaction of the human rights organisations was to reject the proposal. Rather than a report destined to collect dust in the archives, they wanted a political judgement first coming from parliament, and then a legal judgement from the civilian courts.
To complete his scheme, Alfonsin then modified, with parliamentary assent, the code of military justice.
Notably he laid down that the military tribunal should come to a verdict in six months, failing which it would be six months failing which it would he replaced by the supreme civilian court.
The last link in this complex strategy consisted of not declaring an amnesty for the victims of the repression. He revoked the military's self-amnesty of 1983, but on the other hand no amnesty was granted to the political prisoners. What he wanted to do was to cover himself with the military, by rejecting the amnesty, and maintaining this false equation, and by a threat — as I will explain later -which has continually hung over the course of the trial.
This procedure was clearly both unjust and untrue and for several reasons. First, there was obviously camouflaged amnesty for the military in the form of the recognition of the 'duty of obedience' which white. washed their actions.
Second, the lifting of the state of siege for the October 1983 elections brought about the automatic release of all the political prisoners who had been detained but not tried - who made up about half of those in the prisons.
Finally, after these elections, the congress quickly adopted a law which stated that, in view of the particularly rigorous prison conditions under the dictatorship, each day in prison would count as two for political prisoners, and three for ordinary criminals.
This device allowed most of the other prisoners to be freed without having to declare an amnesty. Those who had been sentenced to 12 years imprisonment and had served six were freed, while others who had harsher sentences had their remaining time suspended.
Thus, there now remain 14 political prisoners, whose continued detention is only symbolie. These measures were designed to take the steam off the campaign for the release of the political prisoners, without involving
23
Question. To start with, could you tell us the general stakes in the trial of the nine military chiefs?
Answer. The trial of the military is the result of a basic commitment in Raul Alfonsin's electoral programme. It concerned punishing the violations of human rights - kidnapping, torture, 'disappearances' , assassinations - perpetrated under the dictatorship.
One should remember that the objective of this repression was to liquidate a large layer of the vanguard in the trade union and political spheres.
The report of the Sabato commission, published under the title Nunca Mas (Never again) estimates that among the victims of the repression 30% were workers, 21% were students, about 11% were from the liberal professions and about 3% were artists and journalists.
As for age, 17% of the victims were between 16 and 20, 34% were between 20 and 25, 26% were between 25 and 30 and 11% between 30 and 35. I also remind you that human rights organisations reckon the number of disappeared people to be 30,000, and the Sabato report recognises 9,000 'documented' cases of disappearances.
All this proves, contrary to the official propaganda of that period, that the objective was not just to finish off the armed organisations of the left, which were held responsible for the quasi insurrection in Buenos Aires in July 1975.
What the military dreaded above all was the possibility of a link-up between these armed organisations and the militant vanguard of the trade union movement. This is why the repression was so widespread.
Q. Certain human rights organisations have strongly criticised
Alfonsin's approach. Why?
A. After his election Alfonsin found himself obliged to carry out his electoral promise and to respond to the demands of a large section of society determined to clear up the question of the missing persons.
The basic strategy of Alfonsin was to bring to justice the nine members of the three juntas, so as to safeguard the military establishment in general. His approach was, therefore, in line with this concern and was radically different from that of the Nuremburg trial of the Nazi leaders, in spite of the too often cited analogy. It was to control and limit the effects of the trial by means of decrees and adjustments to the military code of justice.
This led to the setting up of a rather complex mechanism. As soon as it took office in December 1983 the Alfonsin government laid down that the commanders of the three military juntas, and they alone, must be tried, and that the trial should take place in the supreme military court, and not in front of a civilian tribunal.
By law, he established a "duty of obedience" which played a key role in preventing the judgement from extending to middle-ranking officers, who were the direct agents of the crimes and the repression.
At the same time the human rights organisations - there are eight principal ones in Argentina including the "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" and all progressive circles called for the setting up of a bicameral parliamentary commission in order to judge politically the acts of all those who were implicated in the crimes of "disappearing" people.
Alfonsin responded to this demand by constituting a body with less political weight and no legislative
International Viewpoint 9 December 1985
General Videla and his acolytes, during the period of the dictatorship (DR)
an obligation to grant an amnesty for them, which would have upset the military. Q. But despite everything, the momentum of the process seems to have led things beyond the initial limits. A. In spite of the restrictions inherent in the set-up which I have explained, the fact that CONADEP had authority as an institutional body with material resources at its disposal, a computer and a certain moral authority, all went to lend a lot of momentum to its researches into missing persons. The result was not just the publication of a book with a wide circulation.
First of all, it is true that the limited ambit of this commission meant that in practice the army refused to hand over the reports that were asked of it. But CONADEP, as most of the human rights activists now admit, made it possible for the survivors - there were more than was imagined - to be brought together and little by little to piece together the puzzle from their memories and to collate their evidence.
It was a painstaking job: to put together what the disappeared had been able to hear and not see, since they were always blindfolded, and little by little, by approximation, to reassemble the places, to locate a camp, to discover its hierarchy and so on. It was this work which enabled dossiers to be drawn up and accusations to be lodged against military personnel that were so clearly identified.
The publication of CONADEP's report, immediately followed by a television programme, with the same title, Nunca Mas, was an important event. More than 300,000 copies of the report have already been sold.
Since then the whole of the Argentinian population has had to face up to what really happened. This was all the more so because the report - and this is its special merit - went beyond the personal testimonies. It organised them, and succeeded *in showing that the system of arrests and disappearance was very much a method, and not a succession of accidents and mistakes.
The method reflected a systematic organisation at all levels, like the terrorist state itself, with clearly defined ground rules for each particular area of operation. Thus the hidden face of a state terrorist operation, directed from the centre, was brought out in to the open.
While the population absorbed the report, the procedure of the military court ground on. After the prescribed term of six months, the court threw the case out, stating the opinion that the accused military chiefs had acted within the framework of the fight against subversion.
Alphonsin and the civil courts -(90% of the judges being the same as under the dictatorship) - agreed to give the military court another three months to try to convince them to review their decision.
But the military dug their heels in, and it was only then that the trial was finally transferred to a civilian court.
It is this six months of long-drawnout procedures that explains why the trial of the army chiefs is only now taking place in these unusual condi. tions, in a civilian court but in the framework of the military code. It is this that determines both the procedure and the form of the trial, from the absence of the accused during the testimony of the witnesses, even to the arrangement of the public gallery.
Q. What are the first noticeable effects of this trial?
A. In four months of sessions since April 1985, the court has heard more than 800 witnesses, thousands of others not having been called, it being considered that their testmony would only repeat what had already been said.
Many of the names of particular torturers have been clearly cited in the witness box. The fact that these military personnel cannot be prosecuted as a result of the principle of 'duty of obedience' has created in the public mind a terrible feeling that these people are still above the law.
From this point of view the impact of the trial is enormous. There are three or four pages of coverage in most newspapers every day. It is broadcast on radio, and in a much more limited way on television. A weekly summary of the proceedings of the trial is sold in the kiosks.
In spite of all the limitations, all the limitations the horrific contents of the testimonies are creating a massive awareness of the scope of state terrorism.
The claim of "shared responsibility' between the armed organisations of the left and the military has been profoundly shaken. This is one of the factors that are helping to throw out of gear the projects for a coup d'Etat, which without doubt are present here and now within the army.
One could say, making all due allowances, that Argentina resembles postwar Germany. The trial has reinforced in a decisive way the social traumatism built up by the "missing" There is a widespread feeling of responsibility and of bad conscience, for having done nothing, for not having wanted to know.
Today still the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo refuse to go to identify the bodies discovered in the mass graves, until the assassins are exposed and tried.
There has been intimidation of witnesses. Some have been threatened, others came especially out of exile and then left again. One woman was even kidnapped twice. But, for the time being, the military is on the defensive with the trial, and in spite of the limits within which he has endeavoured to contain it, Alfonsin has reinforced his legitimacy. Most people have not followed the details or analysed the trial.
They remember one thing; he dared. He dared to bring the military in front of the courts - that is in this continent a big first.
Certainly, the Radical Party government has done its utmost to sacrifice a few of the guilty as scapegoats in order to preserve better the integrity of the military institution as a whole.
The military did not have the International Viewpoint 9 December 1985
ARGENTINA political intelligence to accept the steps proposed by Alfonsin and to pass judgement on themselves, which could have partially reestablished their authority. It was for this reason that Alfonsin held the trial in front of a civilian jurisdiction.
But it mustn't be forgotten that there was not an amnesty law. That means that all offences subsequent to March 1973 (the date of the last amnesty) can be prosecuted.
Consequently, the testimony of an ex- disappeared' person, convicted of having belonged to the People's Revolutionary Army or to the Montoneros, makes it possible for them to be accused and arrested themselves.
This single element shows how much this trial is intertwined with an extremely unstable social situation, how much it depends on a relationship of forces that is still not entirely clear.
The forces who supported the military assassins continue to operate in the political arena. It is by taking this into consideration that the deep dynamic of this trial has to be interpreted. It is unfolding under the pressure of conservative sectors and "golpistas' (supporters of a coup) who have been trying hard to limit it, - and at the same time it is slowing down the right and restricting its room for maneuver.