MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Last Argentine Junta member dies aged 93
Graffigna was the last surviving member of the Argentine juntas Former Air Force General Omar Domingo Rubens Graffigna died under house arrest on Monday, it was announced.
The last surviving member of Argentina's military juntas which ruled the country between 1976 and 1983 had been sentenced in December 2018 to 15 years' jail time for his involvement in crimes against humanity.
Graffigna was commander in chief of the Air Force when he joined the second military junta together with Roberto Viola (Army) and Armando Lambruschini (Navy) between 1979 and 1981.
The Air Force general escaped justice at the historic junta trials in 1985 in democratic times under President Raúl Alfonsín, but was finally sentenced to 15 years' inprisonment in December 2018 for the kidnapping and torture of José Pérez Rojo and Patricia Roisinblit at the clandestine “Virrey Cevallos” detention centre in the late 1970s.
The couple, of Montoneros allegiance, had a one-year-old daughter, Mariana, who was put under care from a relative but Patricia was eight months pregnant when she was taken to the ESMA's clandestine maternity where Guillermo was born and then handed over to the foster parenting family of a repressor.
At the beginning of his last trial, Graffigna's defence team had claimed their client had Alzheimer's disease but subsequent tests proved he was aware of the events around him and he could also read and write.
Ironically, Graffigna had been born in 1926 on the second day of April, a date which eventually have a different meaning within the Air Force.
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Read all commentsWhy the hell didn't he die alone in a concrete cell? (Given that nobody in Argentina knew how to tie a thirteen loop Hangman's knot?)
Dec 12th, 2019 - 05:31 am 0Let's point out that José Pérez Rojo and Patricia Roisinblit were not only kidnapped and tortured, but they remain missing.
Dec 12th, 2019 - 06:25 pm 0Graffigna escaped justice for almost 30 years because the criteria for sentencing of the members of the junta required a high standard of proof.
Both the trial to the junta members and the later prosecutions that became possible after the elimination of the statute of limitations for crimes against humanity were exemplary and a demonstration of the will of the Argentines to prevent repetition of the horrendous crimes of the last civic-military dictatorship.
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