Australia, December 12: A Former navy captain known as the “blond angel of death” went on trial overnight with 16 other former police and military officers charged with crimes against humanity during Argentina’s 1976-1983 “dirty war” against leftists.
Alfredo Astiz, 57, whose nickname came from his cherubic looks when in the 1970s he infiltrated human rights groups whose members were later kidnapped, is charged in the killings of two French nuns, the disappearance of an Argentine journalist and other crimes.
Astiz sat motionless as a judge read the charges against him.
Dozens of people, among them relatives of people who disappeared, waved pictures of the victims.
Astiz could face a sentence of life in prison if convicted.
Astiz and the other men on trial worked in task forces at the Naval Mechanics School, or ESMA, where thousands of dissidents and suspected leftists died or disappeared during the military dictatorship.
“I hope justice is finally done,” said Victor Basterra, the man who was jailed at the ESMA for the longest time.
Mr Basterra is one of only 200 survivors of the more than 5000 prisoners held there.
Most were drugged and put in airplanes to be thrown into the river or the sea while still alive.
This is one of two large trials now underway involving numerous rights abuses under the military government after an amnesty law was overturned in 2005.
In the other trial, Reynaldo Bignone, 81, the last military president during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, is among the defendants.
When the dictatorship fell in 1983, courts convicted former members of the military junta of human rights crimes, but they were later released under an amnesty.
Astiz, who was convicted in absentia in France for the killing of the nuns, tried to lead a normal life and was photographed in Buenos Aires nightclubs or at vacation spots.
But he became a symbol of the abuses by the dictatorship.
On several occasions, people attacked him in public.
In 2005, Argentina’s Supreme Court struck down the amnesty at the urging of then-President Nestor Kirchner, husband of current President Cristina Fernandez.
Since then, courts have convicted and sentenced a handful of former military officers on human rights charges.
The case against Astiz and other ESMA officers has dragged on for years. A
court had ordered the suspects freed because some were held for up to seven years while awaiting trial, in violation of Argentine law.
Astiz fired his defenCe attorney just before the trial began and said he did not recognize the authority of the court, in an attempt to delay the proceedings.
The trial is expected to involve more 280 witnesses and last six to eight months.
According to a government report, more than 11,000 people died or disappeared during the military regime’s crackdown on leftists and other opponents of the military regime in what is commonly known as the “dirty war.”
Human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000.
—Agencies