Where witnesses drop dead before trial

last updated 8 January 2015

Jorge Marirrodrig

El Pais (Spain)

Something fishy is going on in Argentina, said Jorge Marirrodrig in Madrid’s El Pais. Witnesses in an investigation into the children of the disappeared are being found dead shortly before they can testify. The disappeared were the tens of thousands of political dissidents who vanished—they were probably tortured and killed—during the 1976–83 “dirty war,” when a military junta ruled the country. Some 200 children born to dissident mothers in captivity were given to couples loyal to the junta. One of those kids, Maria Barragan, is suing her adoptive parents for complicity in her kidnapping. Yet the trial keeps hitting curious snags. First, Hector Fabres, a former military officer who was to testify about the children, was found dead in his prison cell, a victim of poisoning. Police ruled it a suicide, “but advocates for the disappeared and even the current democratic government were skeptical.” Then, just a few weeks ago, when another military officer was found shot in the head—another alleged suicide—right before he, too, was to testify, the suspicions mounted. Everyone believes the two men were murdered. But no one will say whom they suspect. Even though the junta has been out of power since 1983, Argentines fear that those who once oppressed them can still get them. The two witnesses’ deaths seem to prove that “even though the Argentine dictatorship collapsed, many of the individuals who ran it are still at large.”