Complementarity: Contest or Collaboration? - FICHL

Fewer Places to Hide? The Impact of Domestic War Crimes Prosecutions on
International Impunity
mitted “in the context of a genocide that took place in Argentina between
1976 and 1983”. This was the second major ruling to be handed down
since the amnesty laws for crimes against humanity were lifted in 2005.
On 13 February 2007, the Argentine government indicted and issued
an extradition request to Spain for Isabel Perón, a former president,
while the former chief of staff to Perón and subsequent president, Jorge
Videla, has also been indicted. Videla and 20 other persons were also
indicted on 24 November 2008 for crimes committed in police facilities
and the San Martín prison in Córdoba, an area southwest of Buenos Aires
in the foothills of the Andes. On 28 April 2008, a court in Spain denied
the extradition request in the Perón case since the alleged crimes did not
amount to crimes against humanity, a prerequisite for acceding to such a
request.
After the opening of the trial of former chaplain Christian von Wernich
on 5 July 2007, who was convicted to life imprisonment on 9 October
2007, another trial of ten military officers started a week later on 10
July 2007 in Buenos Aires. Notable among the accused are General Cristino
Nicolaides, a member of the last junta in power in the early 1980s,
who escaped prosecution thanks to a secret agreement with the democratic
government in 1983. Nicolaides was the head of intelligence battalion
601 in the late 1970s. He and seven others were convicted on 18 December
2007 and ordered to serve prison terms of between 20 years and
25 years for kidnapping and killing several members of a leftist guerrilla
group, Montoneros.
On 13 July 2007, the Supreme Court also overturned the presidential
pardon granted to General Omar Riveros, accused of human rights
violations in the 1970s.
On 1 February 2008, two retired military officers were arrested in
connection with the massacre of 16 leftist guerrillas in 1972 on a military
base in the Patagonian city of Trelew. They are Ruben Paccagnini (81)
who captained a ship and headed the military base Almirante Zar Trelew,
and Emilio Del Real (73), a frigate captain who allegedly was at the 22
August 1972 shooting of the guerrillas. On 25 April 2008, former police
chief and mayor Luis Abelardo Patti was arrested for his involvement
during the “dirty war”, while on 27 May 2008 the trial of Luciano Menendez,
who was the commander of the regional Third Army Corps at the
time, and seven others began for activities during that same time period
FICHL Publication Series No. 7 (2010) – page 35