by Enrico Tortolano
FORENSIC anthropologists have discovered a pit containing 10,000 bone fragments at a secret Argentine government detention centre where political opponents suffered terror and torture during the dark days of dictatorship.
This is the first discovery of human remains inside a detention centre and confirms the testimonies of hundreds of survivors who have said for years that the Argentine dictatorship habitually tortured, killed and burned the bodies of political opponents. They liked to use electric prods on the genitals of men and women, raped many women and dropped political prisoners from planes into the ocean on the infamous vuelos del muerte or death flights.
“This scientifically confirms the testimonies of the detained”, said Luis Fondebrider, a forensic anthropologist who helped uncover the remains inside the former detention centre known at Arana in La Plata.
Now months of laboratory work are needed to determine the number of bodies destroyed in the pit. The evidence appears to show that bodies were thrown into the pit, covered in fuel and burned along with tyres to disguise the smell of burning flesh. More than 200 bullet marks were also found along a wall bordering the mass grave. Unfortunately for families of the victims, Mr Fondebrider has warned that it won’t be possible to identify many of the victims as prolonged exposure to fire destroys DNA.
“This is the first time there is proof that Arana wasn’t only a detention centre and a torture centre but also a centre of elimination”, said Maria Vedio, 47, legal chair for the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, La Plata.
Supporters of the military dictatorship have always denied that detainees were tortured or killed, despite the well-documented Dirty War in which 30,000 political opponents of the junta “disappeared”. The discovery of human remains at Arana shows that supporters of the dictatorship were lying.
Civilian governments in the 1980s and 1990s pardoned many of the perpetrators of crimes during the Dirty War. Trials resumed a couple of years ago and a small number of minor officials have been prosecuted and sent to jail.
But human rights workers say this latest find should remind Argentina that justice has still not been done and the struggle for the historic memory of the disappeared must continue.
