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Three key figures from Argentina's "dirty war" received hefty jail terms for the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, an Argentine court has ruled.
Argentina took a giant leap forward in its struggle to come to terms with its bloody past during the 1976-83 dictatorship by condemning former dictator Jorge Videla to 50 years in prison for masterminding a plan for stealing the newly-born children of political opponents and handing the babies over to be raised by "good" military families after killing their mothers.
The missing children – stolen from their parents and illegally adopted, often by military families – are one of the most painful legacies of the crackdown on leftist dissent in which rights groups say up to 30,000 people were killed.
The verdict on Thursday evening capped a 16-year trial during which hundreds of hours of testimony were heard proving that the kidnappings were not just collateral damage in the "civil war" between the military and left-wing guerrillas, as supporters of the dictatorship have claimed, but rather a deliberate policy put in place by the top leaders of the regime.
Just over 100 of the children have discovered their true identities, but many families are still searching more than three decades later. Activists say there could be several hundred more individuals who do not yet know that they were taken as babies from their parents.
"The kidnapping of newly-born babies is the last crime that former members of the military regime are willing to admit," says British journalist Robert Cox, who was one of the main witnesses at the trial last year. As editor of the small English-community daily Buenos Aires Herald in the late 1970s, Cox was one of the only journalists in Argentina who dared report on the crimes committed by the military as they happened, including their kidnapping of infants. "It's like the Nazis, what they did was so terrible they could never admit it," Cox said in Buenos Aires upon hearing the verdict that his testimony helped bring about.
An elderly man who identified himself as Francisco Madariaga's grandfather told local television: "This is what we were seeking. We never wanted revenge, we were never hateful. We didn't ask for anything more than justice, and justice has been done."
The reading of the verdict was followed by a huge crowd outside the Buenos Aires court who viewed the proceedings on giant video screens set up on the street in a carnival-like atmosphere organised by human rights groups with some of Argentina's top rock bands playing to the assembled crowd after the verdict was heard.
The sentences in the case known as "the Systematic Plan" investigated the theft and illegal adoption of 34 of the stolen infants.
Until now, top leaders of the regime such as Videla claimed that the kidnappings were haphazard occurrences not sanctioned by his regime, something that Cox refutes. "It was a plan because they set up these maternity wards expressly for that purpose in the camps were they held opponents. They try to make it sound as if they were being humane in saving the kids, but the kindapping of babies is the one thing that even the most right-wing fascist-minded supporters of the dictatorship condemn."
The 11 defendants included former junta leaders Jorge Rafael Videla, 86, Reynaldo Bignone, 84, and ex-navy officer Jorge Acosta, known as the Tiger. They are already serving life sentences for previous human rights convictions.
Apart from Videla, other top leaders of the military regime received sentences ranging from 40 to 15 years, including Reynaldo Bignone, the last leader of the military junta in 1983, former general Santiago Riveros, who oversaw a number of death camps, Jorge Acosta, head of the ESMA death camp where a special maternity ward was set up to deliver many of the abducted babies, as well as doctor Jorge Magnacco, who delivered most of the babies born at the ESMA.
Videla was sentenced to 50 years in prison as the architect of the plan, while Acosta got 30 years and Bignone 15.
A total of 500 babies are believed to have been handed over to military families after their mothers were murdered by the dictatorship. So far, 105 of them, now all in their 30s, have been identified through DNA tests and united with their blood families through the efforts of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, an association formed over three decades ago by the mothers of the missing women whose babies were stolen.
Videla, who is unrepentant about rights abuses committed by the state, described himself as a "political prisoner" during the trial and said any abductions that did take place were not part of a systematic plan.
"This trial crowns many years of struggle by the Grandmothers," said Victoria Montenegro, who discovered her real identity and was united with her blood family in 2001. "I think the Grandmothers, now all in their 80s, deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for their brave and untiring work," added Cox.
"The women giving birth, who I respect as mothers, were militants who were active in the machine of terror," the former dictator said in his closing remarks. "Many used their unborn children as human shields."
One wife of a military officer who brought one such baby home 34 years ago claimed she never knew the baby was the son of a murdered political opponent. "My priority has always been my children, I feel I have three children although one is not my biological son," said Susana Colombo, who was sentenced to five years for the kidnapping of Francisco Madariaga, who only found out his real identity two years ago after growing up believing Colombo was his mother.
Some of the stolen babies were born to women held at clandestine torture centres. Nurses have told how some babies were breast-fed by their mothers for several days, while others were taken away immediately. No birth certificates were issued, making the task of identifying them and reuniting them with their parents' relatives painstaking and lengthy.
"This is justice, this is democracy, at last these people who did us so much damage are condemend, although personally it is a very difficult moment for me," said Madariaga in tears upon hearing the verdict.
Most of the 34 children in the case have been identified. They include pro-government city legislator Juan Cabandie, now 34, who was born at the infamous ESMA Naval Mechanics School when his 16-year-old mother Alicia was held there. He was adopted by a policeman and given a new name.
Another is leftist lawmaker Victoria Donda, whose parents were also kidnapped and held at the ESMA before disappearing without trace.
Others, such as Clara Anahi Mariani, are still missing. As a three-month-old infant, she was kidnapped when state security services raided her home in 1976, killing her mother and fellow leftist activists in the central city of La Plata.
Her grandmother, Maria Isabel Chorobik de Mariani, has been searching for Clara Anahi ever since. "A lot of girls come here to see if they are Clara Anahi," said Chorobik, who was knitting a sweater for her granddaughter when the raid took place at her son's house on a November night 36 years ago. "At first, it was awful to find out that a girl who had the same birthday, the same name and a bunch of other things that made us think it was her didn't match up in the [DNA] test," she told Reuters Television. "My soul's become hardened."
Chorobik founded human rights group the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to search for the stolen babies of the "disappeared" children. So far 102 have been identified, but campaigners say there could be several hundred more who are yet to discover their true identities.
When the dictatorship fell in 1983, courts convicted former members of the military junta of human rights crimes. They were later released under an amnesty.
In 2005, Argentina's supreme court struck down the amnesty at the urging of then president Nestor Kirchner, late husband of current president Cristina Fernández.
The Kirchners met as student activists in the 1970s, and several of their friends were kidnapped and killed for political activities.
Since then, courts have convicted and sentenced a series of former military and police officers on human rights charges.
The convictions have brought some comfort to rights activists including Chorobik. But she says the nightmare of the stolen babies will haunt the victims and their families for years to come.
"Sometimes when newspapers report that a missing child has been found and they've met their family, people think it's a fairy tale," she said. "But behind all this, there's a heavy burden on these kids. I'm sure Clara Anahi has buried in her memory the noise of that attack, the yelling and the gunshots and being separated from her mother."
