By Don Anque
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Santiago Omar Riveros, age 86 and former chief of the Argentinean Military Institutes Command, was sentenced to life in prison for human rights abuses while he commanded the Campo de Mayo military barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires during the 1970s.
He is accused of more than 40 crimes against humanity involving victims of the era’s so called desaparecidos or “disappeared.”
Amid the wave of accusations, Omar-Riveros was found guilty of torturing and beating to death 15-year-old Floreal Avellaneda, a member of the Communist Youth Federation, and abducting his mother, Iris. Floreal Avellaneda and his mother were abducted in 1976 by a military squad and tortured to find out the whereabouts of the boy’s father, a Communist Party union leader.
“They applied an electric current to my armpits, breasts, mouth, genitals and did exactly the same to my son,” Iris described her torture experience to the Argentinean court.
Floreal and Isis were first taken to the police station at Villa Martelli and tortured. Afterwards, they were taken to Campo de Mayo.
Over the court of the trial, the prosecution presented evidence that Floreal was thrown into the River Plate from a plane that departed from Campo de Mayo. In August of 1976, Floreal’s body was found impaled on the shores of Rio de La Plata in the Uruguayan city of Colonia de Sacramento.
The court found the defendants tactics “unacceptable.” Their main argument was that Floreal’s death was part an accident.
Another former Military Institutes Command intelligence chief, Fernando Verplaetsen, was also sentenced to 25 years in prison in connection with the human rights abuses. Four other defendants were sentenced to serve between eight to 18 years in prison.
For more information, please see:
BBC News – ‘Dirty war’ general found guilty – 13 August 2009
Yahoo News – Perpetua para Santiago Omar Riveros – 12 August 2009
Yahoo News – Argentine general gets life for rights abuses – 12 August 2009
Telam Noticias – Dan a conocer la sentencia en el juicio por el secuestro y asesinato de Floreal Avellaneda – 12 August 2009
