Complementarity: Contest or Collaboration? - FICHL

Complementarity and the Exercise of Universal Jurisdiction for
Core International Crimes
which resulted in a conviction for all of them on 25 July 2008. Another
trial involving Menendez and Antonio Bussi, an 82-year-old former general
who led military operations in Tucuman province, began on 6 August
2008 based on charges related to a 1976 kidnapping and disappearance of
an Argentine senator. They were convicted on 4 September 2008.
On 6 August 2008, a court in the north-eastern Argentine province
of Corrientes handed down sentences ranging from 18 years to life in
prison to four former soldiers for torturing and killing political prisoners.
Receiving a life sentence was Julio Barreiro, while Carlos de Marchi and
Horacio Losito were each sentenced to 25 years in prison. The court sentenced
to 18 years in prison Raul Raynoso and acquitted Carlos Piriz.
On 13 August 2009, Santiago Omar Riveros, a former general who
commanded the notorious detention centre Campo de Mayo military barracks
on the outskirts of Buenos Aires during Argentina‟s military rule,
was sentenced to life in prison for human rights abuses. He was found
guilty of involvement in the 1976 murder of 15-year-old communist youth
member, Floreal Avellaneda, who was tortured to death. Riveros‟s former
intelligence chief, Fernando Verplaetsen, was also jailed for 25 years in
connection with the boy‟s killing while four other officers were given jail
terms of between eight and 18 years.
On 23 October 2009, retired general Jorge Olivera Rovere and retired
colonel Jose Menendez were sentenced to life imprisonment for
crimes committed during the Argentine military dictatorship. Rovere, who
had authority over several detention centres during the dictatorship, was
found guilty of four murders and responsible for 116 abductions and disappearances.
Menendez served as second chief of the Air Defense Artillery
101 between 1976 and 1979. Three others were acquitted during the
proceedings.
On 2 November 2009, a trial began for Argentina‟s last dictator,
Reynaldo Bignone, a retired general, as well as for five former generals
and two others who are accused of kidnappings and murders that prosecutors
say took place in the Campo de Mayo military base. General Bignone
is accused of holding ultimate responsibility for myriad cases of torture,
illegal break-ins and deprivations of human rights from 1976 to 1978,
before he was appointed president by the military junta in the waning
years of the dictatorship. As president from 1982 to 1983, General Big-
FICHL Publication Series No. 7 (2010) – page 36