Hebe Pastor de Bonafini, Argentina's iconic Mother of Plaza de Mayo, died Sunday. She was 93. She had been discharged on Oct. 13 from a La Plata hospital but was admitted again on Nov. 12 after her health deteriorated.
Plaza de Mayo Mothers leader Hebe de Bonafini, aged 93, was hospitalized in La Plata late Monday. Although she was said to be in good health, she will remain at La Plata's Hospital Italiano for monitoring purposes, it was reported.
A judge in Argentina has indicted the head of human rights organization the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. Hebe de Bonafini, 88, has been charged with misusing public funds allocated to a social housing project.
Hundreds of supporters prevented Argentine police on Thursday from executing an arrest warrant against the 87-year-old president of the human rights groups Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in a highly politicized corruption case. Hebe de Bonafini had refused to submit to questioning about the alleged embezzlement of public funds meant for a low-income housing project, “Shared Dreams”, registered in her group’s name.
Argentina's Defense minister Agustín Rossi said that secret minutes dating back to the military dictatorship of 1976-83 will be available for the public to read and study, while admitting that he did not know why the documents had not been discovered previously.
Neatly kept and organized documents dating to the start of Argentina’s last dictatorship, 1976/1983, shows the names of activists who went missing and citizens blacklisted under the regime, officials announced in Buenos Aires. The documents also show that the military junta had planned to hold onto power until 2000.
Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman rejected allegations about an alleged “discrediting operation” by Argentina’s ambassador to the Vatican Juan Pablo Cafiero to stop the election of former Buenos Aires city archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new pope and denied that the government has changed its opinion about now Francis.
Over twenty offices and homes were raided by the Argentine police on search warrants as part of the ongoing investigation into alleged money laundering and fraud with government housing funds by the human rights organization Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Foundation.
The Wall Street Journal in an article credited to Matt Moffett, tells the story of how the respected human rights group, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and close ally of Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner are embroiled in a controversy over misused funds.
Under the heading of “Corruption in Argentina: the mother of all scandals?”, The Economist edition of this week has an article on the controversy surrounding the once-revered human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.