Angel of Death gets life -- in prison

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
10/27/2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Argentine criminals sentenced for torture killings.

Justice has been a long time in coming for several men found guilty of crimes against humanity in Argentina. However, after 28 years, a former spy nicknamed "the Angel of Death" and 11 other former government officials have been sentenced to life in prison for crimes committed during the country's dictatorship.

The 'Angel of Death' and 11 other defendants will finally pay for their crimes against humanity.

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BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (Catholic Online) - The men were all convicted of kidnapping, torturing, and killing leftist dissidents at a specialized torture center known then as the Navy Mechanics School.

The "Angel of Death" known officially as Alfredo Astiz, age 59, was a former Navy spy. He was convicted of participating in the kidnap, torture and murder of two French nuns, a journalist, and three founders of a human rights group on which he was spying for the dictatorship.

The verdicts were televised and have met with wide applause in Argentina and much of the world. Several surviving family members of victims compared the trials to the N�rnberg trials were prominent Nazis were prosecuted for their crimes.

The gravity of the atrocities committed by these men cannot be understated. Approximately 5,000 human beings passed through the specialized torture facility known as the Navy Mechanics School. Of those 5,000 souls, half perished within.

The facility also housed a maternity ward where pregnant women were kept until they gave birth, and were then murdered. The babies were stolen and it is unclear what happened to all of the children.

The defendants have accused the Argentinean government of pursuing what they say are unjust illegitimate fusions for their own political gain. Several claimed that they had been granted amnesty from the previous government and that their current detention and trial violated those agreements.
Astiz in delivering his own remarks said, "this government doesn't hesitate in its revenge against the people who combated terrorism."

Fortunately, whatever promises of amnesty were made they were nullified by the Argentine Supreme Court -- a wise decision considering the depravity of the crimes that these men perpetrated.

� 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
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Keywords: Argentina, Angel of death, Astiz,

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1 - 2 of 2 Comments

steve rainbow
1 year ago
Civil War, whether openly declared or secretly waged, is a terrible thing. Almost every Nation has it's dirty secrets and shameful past.Justice and reconciliation can only truly occur when the Truth of the Past is held up to the light for examination.Amnesty for Torture affects us all as it degrades Humanity and God Himself as we are all created in His image.
H Marks
1 year ago
While the convictions to these heinous crimes are just, many thousands of terrorist criminals, including their commanders REMAIN NOT ONLY FREE, BUT SOME ARE ACTUALLY IN THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT. These terrorists, who have openly confessed in books and media their violent crimes were engaged in kidnappings and killings of thousands of civilians, bombings robberies and a nation-wide campaign of terror. This campaign of terror violated the peace and tranquility that the country had experienced in its streets despite pressing economic problems back then. It was precisely this campaign of terror that motivated the aggressive response from the civilian government by written order to the armed forces of which Astiz and others convicted were part to ANNIHILATE the terrorist movement in the country. The terrorist fighting and its response was so violent to the country that the armed forces foolishly seized power, rather than keep acting within their democratic mandate.

The confessed criminal terrorists argued in court that, despite widespread evidence to the contrary, they were merely civilians, and thus EXEMPT from the laws applying against crimes against humanity that were applied to the transgressors on the military side. Thus they avoided the breach of the statute of limitations for their crimes AND WERE NOT TRIED FOR THEM.

This divergent judicial treatment to both sides who used the same violence and methods, including fighting in the jungles in platoons, is nonsensical and vitiates the principle of BLIND JUSTICE: the terrorists had received military training and military equipment by foreign powers (Cuba), received foreign funding, acted with an internal military structure and using military methods and their aim was to take over the government and install a Marxists-Leninist regime as part of their role in the Cold War. Clearly, the crimes that they committed were crimes against humanity and not isolated civilian crimes.

The definition of PRIVILEGE (from Latin privi = private, legis = law) is a PRIVATE LAW, and it applies here to the freed, CONFESSED terrorist assassins. These incredible judicial "mistakes" were crafted by the interpretation of courts that were and are still subject to very heavy political influence by the complicit holder of the executive power, which was part of that terrorist movement back then.

Your focusing exclusively on the guilt of the armed forces personnel that committed flagrant excesses and and your forgetting to analyze the merciless killings and totalitarian plans of the terrorists who provoked their reaction, and the fact that these crimes are still unpunished and their perpetrators roam free, including acting in the same government that is judging the military excesses shows an unbalanced and unjust treatment of this issue, which lacks both justice and charity.

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