MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“The Confession”.

Argentine retired Gen. Ramon Diaz Bessone acknowledged on a French television show that will be broadcast on Monday, that thousands of people were tortured and executed clandestinely during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

The Canal Plus television program, titled "Death Squads: The French School" and produced by Marie Monique Robin, espouses that "dirty war" tactics used by the Argentine junta were copied from French policies in Indochina and Algeria.

The left-leaning Argentine newspaper Pagina 12 was authorized to publish some of Diaz Bessone's remarks on Sunday.

According to the daily, this is the first time a high-ranking officer of the former military government has admitted that security forces operated outside of the law.

Diaz Bessone commanded the 2nd Army Corps and was a government minister for Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the junta after taking power in 1976.

The retired general said human rights organizations are exaggerating and resorting to propaganda when they claim that 18,000 to 30,000 people disappeared during military rule. He puts the number at 7,000.

Diaz Bessone justified using clandestine tactics with statements such as: "Do you think we could have (publicly) executed 7,000?" "Look at the mess the pope started for (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco when he merely executed three. The world would have fallen in on us," he explained.

Franco governed Spain from 1939 to 1975.

Incarcerating the opposition was not a viable option, Diaz Bessone argues, because "they would have been set free by a constitutional government" and "taken up arms again, to kill once more." Diaz Bessone was prosecuted when democracy returned to Argentina in the early 1980s, but he avoided punishment when then-President Carlos Menem approved amnesty laws in 1989.

Nevertheless, he is on the list of 46 people which Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon has attempted to get extradited to stand trial in Madrid on charges of genocide, torture and state-sponsored terrorism.

Forty of the 46 were arrested in Buenos Aires in July, but three from the list are fugitives and another three are dead.

But on Friday, the Spanish government announced it was suspending the extradition request, because the Argentine legislature on Aug.21 revoked the amnesty laws and the Argentine courts are now able to prosecute human rights violators from the military regime.

Due to the Spanish decision and the rule which only allows alleged rights violators to be held for a maximum of 40 days prior to extradition, the 40 detainees will be released by Tuesday when the 40-day period expires, a local judge said.

An exception could be made if criminal charges against the 40 are filed in court on Monday, as some organizations promised to do, and are accepted by the judicial authorities.

Diaz Bessone believes that a national reconciliation is difficult. "This was an internal war, similar to a civil war. When the war is over, old enemies must live together and that is very hard because there are deep wounds that we keep on feeling in this country," he told Canal Plus.