MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands Group Reveals Details of the Life of “Veteran of the Malvinas” Alejandro Betts

“Betts was never in any danger from the Islanders or the British in 1982, because, among other things, no one knew that he had changed sides.”

Alexander Jacob Betts was never exposed to any danger whatsoever from other Falkland Islanders or Britain’s Armed Forces during the 1982 conflict. This has been stated by the Falklands History Group in reference to Betts, who was born in Stanley, and lived in the Islands until the end of the 1982 conflict, but who is now an Argentine citizen.

  Alexander Betts has been embroiled in a controversy over his past with the revelation that he receives a pension from the Argentine state as a “Veteran of the Malvinas War”, which has come as a surprise to veterans organisations and the Argentine media. And this has been made more controversial still by a recent decision of the Argentine Supreme Court defining the conditions required of a “war veteran” with the right to a pension.

In a communiqué provoked by Betts’ own statements, the Falklands History Group maintains that “Betts, despite what he says, was never in any danger from Falkland Islanders or the British in 1982, because among other things no one knew that he had changed sides during the Argentine occupation of the Islands”. Betts is now an Argentine citizen and petitioner before the Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations in favour of the Argentine claim to the Falklands/Malvinas.

“He never had to dodge bullets or shell splinters from the British bombardment of Port Stanley; that was not the case”, the History Group says.

It’s true that “some Islanders knew that Betts had abandoned his pregnant wife and baby for an Argentine girl-friend then working in the Islands. But for everyone this was just an extra-marital affair that had ended in a family break-up”.

However, “nobody in the Islands knew that Betts was so infatuated with his Argentine girl-friend that this had led him to change sides, given his past as a hard-line critic of the Argentine position over the Falklands. And, as for his “well-known” opinions on the subject (in favour of Argentina), nobody had the remotest idea about these. He finally abandoned the Islands in 1982 in order to stay with the Argentine girl-friend he was so in love with.

Similarly, the statement by Betts that his detailed studies of Falklands history, over between two and four years, had led him to conclude that he must support Argentina’s claim “is nothing more than his clever cover story, thought up later, to justify his actions”.

“Betts never studied history while he was in the Falklands. But these (unproven) claims of his have allowed him to portray himself in Argentina as a scholar and high-principled Argentine patriot, when the reality is that he is nothing more than a tool of the Argentine government and its international propaganda”

The Falklands History Group statement ends by saying that Betts got his pension as a “Veteran of the Malvinas” and the benefits that come with this, not because of anything he did during the Argentine occupation of the Falklands, but “as a reward for going as a petitioner to the United Nations where he was required to repeat the propaganda of the Argentine Government”.