Three former high-level Navy officers were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed during the last military dictatorship. Five other former officers received 25-year verdicts.
Former Navy officers Jorge Alberto Errecaborde, Roberto Fernandez, and Jose Guitian were found guilty of 36 kidnapping charges, and the murders of two shipyard workers on Monday, and sentenced to life in prison. Former Commander of Naval Operations, Antonio Vanek, former head of the Navy Juan Carlos Herzberg and former heads of the Coastguard Louis Rocca and Carlos Jose Ramon Schaller, were alongside former officer Eduardo Antonio Meza sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Over 100 witnesses appeared before the Federal Criminal Court during the trial, which took place the city of La Plata.
Jorge ‘Turco’ Sobrado, member of the Professional Centre for Human Rights, said that “after 39 years, significant judgement is passed,” stressing the importance of bringing criminals to justice, and linking the sentences to what is known as the ‘death flights’ that took place during the dictatorship.
The military airport on the southern end of Aeroparque was used to carry out ‘death flights’ (photo: Wikipedia)
However, Tania Nuez, the spokesperson for the human rights organisation Children of La Plata, said that the sentences were only a fraction of the justice desired. “We are judging eight killers. But there used to be ten, two died unpunished. And this case deals with 40 cases, but in the areas of Ensenada, Berisso and La Plata, there are hundreds of missing prisoners. What the trial unfortunately shows, is that these processes are not an actual reflection of what the genocide actually meant for our country. We haven’t won yet,” she said to La Izquierda Diario.
The ‘death flights’ were used by the military to disappear people. Live victims were dropped from airplanes over either the Atlantic Ocean or the Rio Plata. According to former Navy officer Adolfo Scillingo who in 2005 was sentenced to 640 years in prison in Spain, there were about 200 death flights between 1977 and 1978.
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