MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ex-Argentine Dictator Detained

Former junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri was arrested Thursday for allegedly taking part in the abduction, torture and execution of 20 leftist guerrillas and others during Argentina's military dictatorship.

The 72-year-old general, who led Argentina to war with Britain over the Falkland Islands in 1982, was arrested on the orders of a federal judge prosecuting human rights abuses.

Galtieri was picked up at his suburban Buenos Aires home and driven under heavy guard to the jail on the outskirts of the city. A military spokesman refused to comment on his detention.

Federal Judge Claudio Bonadio also ordered the arrest of 42 other former military and state security officials, including Gen. Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason and former army chief Gen. Cristino Nicolaides.

Both men presided over military battalions accused of widespread atrocities during the seven-year dictatorship.

Galtieri was the third of four presidents to serve during the military's 1976-1983 rule.

His arrest revived public scrutiny of a dark chapter in which some 9,000 leftist dissidents were officially reported as killed or missing after what prosecutors called a systematic state crackdown. Human rights groups put the toll at up to 30,000.

Many leftists and other opponents of the military in power at the time were hunted down by security forces and tortured after hours of grueling questioning, rights activists say. In recent years, rights groups have sought ways to bring the former military leaders to justice after they were pardoned by former President Carlos Menem in 1990, five years after receiving life prison sentences for human rights abuses.

Many of the military's top leaders and other officers who served during the so-called Dirty War are now under house arrest on charges of kidnapping children belonging to mothers who "disappeared" during the military's rule.

The cases have been a way around the amnesty. Gen. Jorge Videla and Adm. Emilio Massera are among those under house arrest and facing charges they arranged for the adoption of more than 200 children born to mothers who vanished during the Dirty War.

Galtieri was appointed president in November 1981 and six months later ordered Argentine troops to invade the Falkland Islands in a bid to reclaim the British territory in the South Atlantic Ocean, which Argentina claims it inherited from the Spanish crown.

The two countries fought a 78-day war during which more than 700 Argentines and 255 British were killed. Argentina's swift defeat hastened the fall of the military dictatorship and the restoration of democracy, prompting a still unresolved process of how to prosecute the military for their alleged abuses.