Justice in Argentina
February 26, 2010
A trial started in Buenos Aires on Friday of eight former soldiers accused of the 1977 murder of the German student Elisabeth Kaesemann.
Germany is a plaintiff in the case.
The German NGO Coalition against Impunity welcomed the fact that Germany was appearing as a plaintiff. The government hadn't done enough to help at the time Kaesemann and other Germans disappeared, the group's spokesman, lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck, told the EPD press agency.
Two other women, one French and one American, were abducted at the same time as Kaesemann but later freed after their embassies intervened.
The defendants, soldiers at the secret detention camp where Kaesemann was held, must answer to murder and violent kidnapping charges in over 100 cases during Argentina's military dictatorship, from 1976-1983.
One of the defendants, former Camp Commander Pedro Duran Saenz, is now over 70 years old.
Kidnapped and executed
A politically active student, Kaesemann went to Argentina in 1971, where she became involved in leftist social projects. After a military coup in 1976, she assisted persecuted people in leaving the country. She was arrested in March 1977 and held in El Vesubio, a detention camp in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.
Kaesemann was killed in May of the same year, at the age of 30.
Argentinean authorities said that Kaesemann died in a shoot-out, but subsequent forensic investigations in Germany showed that she died from gunshots at close range to the neck and head, indicating an execution-style shooting.
No extradition
The Kaesemann killing will also be addressed in another case in Argentina against former junta leader Jorge Rafael Videla. The 84-year-old is under house arrest. An Argentinean court rejected an extradition request for him to face trial in Germany in 2008.
The junta came to power in 1976 and is estimated to have killed as many as 30,000 people by the early 80s.
In Argentina, hearings for the crimes of the dictatorship have only become possible since the repeal of amnesty laws was upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2005.
Germany was the first European country to bring a case against Argentina as a plaintiff.
smh/dpa/epd
Editor: Nancy Isenson