Missing 'Dirty War' witness found in Argentina
Source: Reuters
(Updates with one witness being found, details) By Fiona Ortiz BUENOS AIRES, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A man who was kidnapped after testifying he was tortured by a former policeman linked to Argentina's military dictatorship was found alive on Friday, his family said, two days after his disappearance sparked a nationwide manhunt. Luis Gerez, a 51-year-old construction worker, was the second "Dirty War" witness to disappear in recent months. His discovery came shortly after President Nestor Kirchner went on national television and accused former state agents of seeking to intimidate judicial investigators and witnesses involved in human rights cases probing the military's rule from 1976 to 1983. Leon Arslanian, Buenos Aires province's security minister, told reporters Gerez had been kidnapped and his body was marked with cigarette burns and bruises. A police patrol found Gerez walking shirtless in a rural area of a Buenos Aires suburb, he said. Earlier on Friday, government officials offered a $130,000 reward for information on Gerez's whereabouts. Several thousand people, many clutching pictures of Gerez, marched near his home, demanding his safe return. Gerez disappeared 100 days after Jorge Julio Lopez, another construction worker, whose testimony was vital in the conviction of a former police commissioner in a landmark human rights trial earlier this year. Lopez is still missing. Kirchner, speaking before Gerez was found, suggested the two men had been kidnapped and said the disappearances were the work of "paramilitary and police elements." "All of Argentine society is hurt by this mafioso action by people looking to guarantee their impunity," he said. Kirchner, a center-left leader who was held briefly by the military when he was a college student, has injected new political will into rights issues since coming to power in 2003. TESTIFIED ABOUT TORTURE Argentina's Supreme Court repealed amnesty laws last year, clearing the way for hundreds of rights cases to be reopened in the courts. According to government reports, more than 11,000 people disappeared during the dirty war, the military's crackdown on leftists and dissidents. Human rights groups put the death toll as high as 30,000. Gerez and Lopez are both from populous Buenos Aires province, which rings the capital. They both testified against high-level figures of the notoriously violent and corrupt provincial police. In a congressional investigation, Gerez testified earlier this year that when he was 17 in 1972, when Argentina was ruled by a military government, he was tortured by Luis Patti, who later became a high-ranking officer in the force. He also testified that Patti kidnapped leftists during the dirty war. Due to the testimony, Patti, who was elected to Congress in 2005, was barred from taking his seat. After he disappeared, Gerez's children said his car had been vandalized and an unknown man recently threatened him at a bus stop, telling him specific details about his family. Gerez had last been seen leaving a friend's house on Wednesday evening. (Additional reporting by Kevin Gray, Jorge Otaola, Lucas Bergman and Damian Wroclavsky)
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
