Alfredo Astiz
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Alfredo Ignacio Astiz (b. November 8, 1951) was a Captain and Intelligence officer in the Argentine Navy, known as the "Blond Angel of Death", during the dictatorial rule of Jorge Rafael Videla in the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976–1983).
He was a member of GT332 (Task Force 332) based in the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War of the late 1970s. GT332 was involved in the deaths of many of the 9,000 to 30,000 victims of forced disappearance during this period. ESMA became a secret concentration camp where as many as five thousand political prisoners were held, tortured and "disappeared". The right-wing military dictatorship justified extra-judicial torture, detention and killing as necessary to end subversion and terrorism from radical leftist groups such as the Montoneros and the ERP, as well as to protect society from atheism and trade unionism.
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[edit] Kidnapping and torture
Astiz was handsome and charming. He specialised in infiltrating peaceful organisations protesting extra-judicial executions to identify their members and, after sufficient members had been identified, kidnap them. A survivor amongst the many he kidnapped, Martin Gras, a human rights lawyer who had trusted him, claimed in 1982 that Astiz was a charming man who rarely tortured or murdered those he kidnapped but usually handed them on to others in the system. Yet Astiz was well thought of within the armed forces for his effective interrogation techniques and in 1979 he was sent to the Argentine embassy in South Africa to give a series of seminars on torture techniques to the South African security police. While there he also participated in a number of discussion groups to exchange ideas regarding methods of interrogation.
In 1976 Astiz kidnapped Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti, the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a non-violent group of mothers protesting the disappearance of their children. Neither she, nor any of the other early members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo kidnapped by Astiz on the same night, was ever seen again. While Astiz kidnapped hundreds of people during 1976 and 1977, it was his kidnap and mistreatment of three foreigners that was later to cause him minor inconvenience as a prisoner of war.
On the 27 January 1977 Dagmar Ingrid Hagelin, a 17-year-old tourist from Sweden, was shot and wounded by Astiz while attempting to escape kidnap. Witnesses saw her later at the ESMA and claimed that Alfredo Astiz was in charge of her interrogation. According to the Argentine Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs tasked to follow up Swedish complaints at the time of Hagelin's shooting and kidnap, Captain Jorge Eduardo Acosta, the commander of GT332, stated that "letting her free is out of the question, we must not give in to public opinion. We must appear strong." Inés Carazzo, then a detainee enslaved and regularly raped by Captain Antonio Pernias, another GT332 officer, claims Acosta ordered that Hagelin be put to death. Hagelin joined the ranks of the "disappeared" and is thought to have been killed and cremated at the ESMA. There is no direct evidence that Alfredo Astiz had any part in the affair after shooting and kidnapping Hagelin, but there is also no evidence of who killed her, who interrogated her or even if she was interrogated.
Alice Dolmon and Leonie Duquet, nuns with French citizenship, were members of a support group for relatives of the disappeared that Astiz infiltrated. He kidnapped them in December 1977 and was witnessed torturing them by beating them, immersing them in water and applying electrified cattle prods to their breasts and into their genitals and mouths. Dolmon's body and those of the loved ones of the people the nuns were trying to console have never been found. Duquet's body was identified (along with that of Azucena Villaflor) by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (also known by their finding and identification of Che Guevara's corpse in Bolivia) in August 2005. [1]
[edit] Falklands War
Lieutenant Commander Alfredo Astiz commanded the fifteen tactical divers (frogmen) who carried out the first act of aggression of the Falklands War. On 19 March 1982 they landed on South Georgia, concealed among workers of Argentine scrap metal dealer Constantino Davidoff. Officially they were there to scrap three derelict whaling stations at Leith which had been purchased by their "employer" in 1979. Instead they dressed up in uniform and raised the Argentine flag in full view of a British Antarctic Survey party.
The next day, March 20, the local head of the British Antarctic Survey handed Astiz a note faxed from the UK Foreign Office asking him to take down his flag and leave. Astiz took down the flag but did not leave. Later that day, HMS Endurance, the Royal Navy's ice patrol ship, was dispatched from Port Stanley on the Falklands to Grytviken, the main British Antarctic Survey base on South Georgia, with 22 Royal Marines tasked to evict him. They arrived on 23 March, hours before a number of Argentine marines landed near Grytviken. More Argentine marines turned up over the following days and there was an armed clash at Grytviken resulting in the Royal Marines surrendering and their repatriation to the UK. Astiz, a junior officer, was not in command of this operation and neither he nor his frogmen were involved in either this or later fighting.
After a number of disasters due to poor weather and equipment on the 21 April and 22 April, a force of Royal Marines with good naval gunfire support forced the capitulation of the Argentine garrison at Grytviken on 23 April. TV crews missed the signing of the surrender document by the Argentine commander because it occurred so rapidly after the end of the fighting, but Astiz, eager for publicity, insisted on signing a surrender document for himself and his small band even though they were covered by the surrender of his commanding officer. The face and name of Alfredo Astiz was, incorrectly, splashed over the world media as the commander of the garrison on South Georgia. This publicity soon caused problems for Astiz.
[edit] Prisoners of war
Soon after the British recapture of South Georgia Nicanor Costa Mendez, the Argentine Foreign Minister, stated that Argentina was technically in a state of war with the UK. At about the same time an Argentine prisoner was shot dead by a Royal Marine who mistakenly thought he was trying to scuttle a captured submarine. The UK informed Argentina, through Brazilian diplomats, that a board of inquiry would be convened under the provisions of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The next day the UK claimed the Argentine prisoners were not prisoners of war because they were taken before Argentina declared hostilities. Six days later they changed their mind. In "Liability of Prisoners of War for Offences committed prior to Capture: the Astiz Affair", International Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 1983, pp. 949-980 Meyer opines that this was because the UK had already implied the Argentine detainees were prisoners of war by applying provisions of the Geneva Conventions. It was justified by the reference in the common articles to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to their applicability to "declared war or any other armed conflict" between signatories.
About three weeks after they were captured the UK announced it would repatriate all 151 soldiers and 39 civilians, five of whom were not Argentine citizens, held in detention on South Georgia. The wide publicity surrounding the surrender of Astiz had already prompted first the Swedish and then the French to make the UK aware that Astiz was accused of criminal acts against their nationals. As they were being shipped to Ascension Island to be handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and flown home, Sweden asked to question Astiz. Soon after the French government asked that Astiz be held while they sort legal remedies for his kidnapping and torture of their citizens. Sweden stated they had eyewitnesses to his wounding and kidnapping of Dagmar Hagelin and the [French that they had eyewitnesses to his kidnapping and torture of Alice Dolmon and Leonie Duquet. The UK initially responded that concerned parties should talk to the ICRC as they would be handing Astiz to them. The ICRC steadfastly refused the requests of Sweden and France to talk to Astiz should he be handed into their custody. Both nations stepped up diplomatic pressure on the United Kingdom not to hand him over and this was successful with the other 189 detainees being sent home "as an act of compassion" and Astiz being held until "the end of the belligerancy", initially on Ascension.
[edit] Repatriation
Two weeks later, under pressure from public opinion at home and the French and Swedish governments, the UK decided to buy time by putting Astiz on a boat from Ascension to the UK. While Astiz was in transit the UK announced he would be made available for interview by representatives of the French and Swedish governments. Soon after the Argentine government made veiled threats against the welfare of three UK journalists they had arrested as spies and linked their release to that of Astiz. The questioning went ahead in June but was performed by the Detective Chief Superintendent of the Sussex Constabulary. Both times he was questioned he kept silent. A detailed report was prepared and given to the Swedish and French governments, but was probably not informative, as Astiz said nothing during the questioning. Astiz was repatriated to Argentina on 10 June 1982, just before the start of the battle for Port Stanley and the Argentine capitulation on the 14th.
The UK government had chosen to read the Third Geneva Convention as protecting Astiz from criminal prosecution in the UK or extradition. Meyer argues that this was an incorrect reading but was justified at the time by four points. Astiz was in protective custody because of special circumstances i.e. surrendering during war. The Geneva Conventions exhort custodial powers to leniency. Astiz was accused of crimes — kidnapping, wounding and torture — which were illegal in Argentina and he should be prosecuted there, not in Sweden or France. Trying Astiz in the UK for real crimes could open the way for prisoners of war in other countries to be tried on trumped up charges to allow those powers to treat them more harshly. In the end there seems to be nothing in the Geneva Conventions themselves that expressly prohibited the prosecution or extradition of Astiz. However, the extradition treaties between the UK and both Sweden and France referred only to crimes committed within the territory of the requesting state and crimes against international law. Astiz was accused of crimes against the citizens of these states in Argentina. Kidnap, torture and wounding were not, at the time, crimes under international law although acts such as genocide, narcotics traffic, piracy, slave trading and hijacking were. Therefore, extradition could not occur. This is where the Astiz case most closely resembles that of Pinochet. The difference was that extraterritorial torture was not an offence in the United Kingdom in 1982 but became a crime of universal jurisdiction there in December 1988 when the United Kingdom incorporated the Convention against Torture. This is why Pinochet was caught. Even so, only acts of torture after the signing of this convention were covered. As the UK signed the convention towards the end of Pinochet's dictatorship only a small number of charges could be brought against him. The changing nature of international law is demonstrated by the difference between the Astiz and Pinochet cases. In the latter not only did a Spanish judge have the authority to order Pinochet's arrest for crimes committed mostly in Chile and mostly against Chileans but the UK was prepared to extradite him to Spain to stand trial for these crimes.
Criminal prosecution within the UK was ruled out during his detention because Astiz committed no crimes against British subjects, their possessions or the British State. Astiz could therefore only be prosecuted in a criminal case for crimes against international law and kidnap, wounding and torture were not, at the time, such crimes even though torture committed since December 1988 now is.
Meyer argues in "Liability of Prisoners of War for Offences committed prior to Capture: the Astiz Affair" that victims of Astiz, or their representatives, may have been successful in securing damages from him if they had brought a civil action while he was in the UK. As with criminal prosecution there is nothing in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 removing the civil liability of prisoners of war for actions committed prior to capture. An English court has jurisdiction over a foreign tort whenever the defendant is in the UK if the alleged act would have been actionable as a tort if committed in England and it was an offence under the laws of the foreign country. For the crimes that Astiz is accused of the first of these is easy to prove. Victims of torture and kidnapping by British officials in Northern Ireland had been compensated for offences committed while Northern Ireland was not self-governing. Therefore torture and kidnap by government officials is actionable as a tort if committed in England. Proving that it was an offence under the laws of Argentina is more difficult. English courts assume that the authorised actions of officials of a foreign government within its sovereign territory are not actionable within their jurisdiction unless those actions are outside the scope of the powers of the government. Since torture is expressly forbidden in the Argentine constitution there is a good argument that Astiz was acting outside his powers as an agent of the Argentine government in torturing Alice Dolmon and Leonie Duquet. Although there were witnesses prepared to testify that they had seen Astiz torture Alice Dolmon and Leonie Duquet this approach did not seem to have been thought of in time and no such case was brought.
[edit] Immunity/convictions
On 16 March 1990, Alfredo Astiz was convicted and sentenced in absentia by the French Assise Court to life imprisonment for his role in the torture and disappearance of the two French nuns, Alice Dolmon and Leonie Duquet. This was possible because French law allows trial of absent foreigners for breaking French laws in other jurisdictions if the crimes are committed against French nationals. Astiz has been arrested several times in Argentina since his repatriation but no prosecution against him has been successful. In 2003, President Néstor Kirchner reversed the legal immunity for crimes granted to the Argentine dirty warriors in the transition to democratic rule. However, Astiz will face trial in Argentina rather than be extradited to France.
[edit] External links
- Arrest
- Facing trial in Argentine to escape French justice
- Site on French victims of Alfredo Astiz (video in french)
[edit] Further reading
- Horacio Verbitsky. 1996. "The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior." New York: New Press. ISBN 1-56584-009-7.
- Meyer, "Liability of Prisoners of War for Offences committed prior to Capture: the Astiz Affair", International Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 1983, pp. 949-980.
