MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former Army Capt., 3 police officers handed down life sentences for crimes during Argentina's last dictatorship

Relatives of the victims have been waiting for this for around 45 years (Pic Pag 12)

A federal court in the Argentine city of Rosario Thursday handed down life in jail sentence to each of the four defendants in the Klotzman case of human rights violations and murder during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

 A former Army Intelligence captain and four former federal police officers were sentenced to life imprisonment by Rosario's Oral Federal Court 2 (TOF2) for crimes against 27 militants of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP).

Retired Army Captain Jorge Alberto Fariña and the former police officers Federico Almeder, Juan Langlois and Enrique Andrés López, were found guilty of “aggravated homicide, aggravated unlawful deprivation of liberty, aggravated torture, suppression of identity, abduction, retention and concealment of a minor under 10 years of age and illicit association.”

Upon hearing the ruling, Patricia Maciel, daughter of Mimí Inchaurraga and Rolando “Pirulo” Maciel, both kidnapped on August 8, 1976, said: “I am very satisfied with the sentence because it was what we expected with the importance of also involving the other forces that we already knew were operating but had not been tried, such as the Federal Police and the Provincial Police.”

She added that “in my case, my parents were disappeared, tortured and later shot and I have been waiting for this for 45 years,” she emphasized.

Nora Lía Pastorini, daughter of Alejandro Pastorini, one of the victims, said: ”I asked the sound engineers to pass the song 'Caminante, no hay camino', the poem by (Antonio) Machado which is precisely the one that Ricardo Klotzman sang to Fernando Brarda, the only survivor of this cause, to accompany him and support him in situations of such torments that they were suffering.”

During the trial, the cases of 29 victims of State terrorism were heard, the majority linked to the ERP, of which there were only 2 survivors.

The trial included the theft and suppression of identity of a minor under 10 years old, daughter of the “disappeared” Ricardo Klotzman and Cecilia Barral, who gave birth in captivity, and who was handed in legal adoption to a married couple from the city of Santa Fe. Their daughter, María Pía, learned her identity in April 2011 after tests at the National Genetic Data Bank and became the 103rd granddaughter recovered by Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.