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Spain blocks trial of Argentines
By CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- The Spanish government said it will not request extradition from Argentina of 39 former military officials and one civilian sought by a Spanish court on charges of human rights abuses under the 1970s Argentine military government. Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the cabinet declined to forward the extradition request it had received from the Spanish court because Argentina should have jurisdiction in such cases, not Spain, under a bilateral treaty. Rajoy, speaking at a nationally-televised news conference after the cabinet meeting, cited the move in Argentina earlier this month to revoke amnesty laws that have protected many current and former military officers from prosecution for the abuses committed during the former Argentine military dictatorships from 1976 to 1983. Human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people died in Argentina during the dictatorships, including many who were kidnapped and later thrown alive from airplanes to their deaths. "When crimes are committed in one nation and it's possible to try those crimes there, that respects the principle of territoriality," Rajoy said, adding that Argentine President Nestor Kirchner has said he wants the crimes to be tried in Argentina. The extradition requests had come from Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has for years been investigating human rights abuses during the former Argentine military junta and also in neighboring Chile, under the former dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet during the 1970s and 1980s. Garzon is best known for his arrest warrant against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was taken into custody while he was in London for back surgery in October, 1998. That led to a legal battle which ended in 2000, when Pinochet was sent back to Chile after his lawyers persuaded a court that their client was unfit to stand trial. The group Human Rights Watch has said that the Spanish court is applying the principle of "universal jurisdiction" in international law, which makes atrocities committed in one country subject to criminal prosecution by courts in another country. Garzon had requested extradition for the 40 Argentines - 39 former military officials and one civilian - but it is the Spanish government which must formally make the extradition request to another nation, and that is what the Prime Minister's cabinet declined to do on Friday. Carlos Slepoy, a lawyer in Spain for victims of the Argentine military junta, said that he hopes there will be trials in Argentina, but he warned that if those trials don't occur, it's likely that Judge Garzon again would request - at a later date - the extradition of the 40 Argentines. "For now, we're in a suspension of the extradition request," Slepoy told CNN in a telephone interview. Slepoy said the Spanish government's decision also sends a "powerful message" to Argentina's Supreme Court, which is facing appeals to the Argentine legislative branch's moves to revoke the amnesty laws that protected many former Argentine officers from prosecution.
Garzon has jailed two people in relation with the so-called "dirty war" waged by Argentina's former right-wing regime against citizens it perceived as leftist and opposition threats. One is Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, 51, extradited by Mexico to Spain last June - the first time that any Latin American nation had agreed to extradite former Argentine officials wanted for human rights abuses. Garzon remanded Cavallo to jail in Spain on June 29 on charges of genocide and terrorism. Human Rights Watch, citing a November 1999 indictment by Garzon, described Cavallo as a Navy lieutenant working in the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires during the military regime. Due to subsequent investigations, the school has since become known as a torture center during the regime. The other is Adolfo Scilingo, who traveled to Spain from Argentina ostensibly to cooperate with officials, who thereupon jailed him on suspicion of human rights abuses. Scilingo had told Time Magazine in 1995 that he helped "disappear" suspected leftists by throwing them from planes into the ocean. "They were unconscious. We stripped them, and when the flight commander gave the order, we opened the door and threw them out, naked, one by one," the magazine reported. "That is the story, and nobody can deny it." Spain's actions have created tension with Argentina and Chile, whose representatives note that Spain itself did not investigate alleged abuses that occurred under the rule of Generalisimo Francisco Franco, whose 36-year rule ended in 1975.
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