ARGENTINA SETTLES LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY TORTURE VICTIM.

Byline: Tim Golden The New York Times

The trial of the Argentine government never took place. But the long and harrowing trial of Jose Siderman finally came to an end Friday, more than 20 years after soldiers abducted him from his home in northern Argentina, tortured him for days and then forced him into exile.

Faced with the prospect of becoming the first foreign government ever tried in U.S. courts for human rights abuses committed on its own soil, Argentina agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Siderman, an 85-year-old retired businessman who had sought millions of dollars in damages.

Siderman and his lawyers said in Los Angeles that under the terms of the accord, they could not disclose what compensation they had won. But one person familiar with the negotiations said the Argentine government had agreed to pay a sizable monetary settlement to Siderman, his wife and their three children, and to acknowledge that they had been victimized by Argentina's former military regime.

``I am so happy - and do you know why?'' Siderman asked in an interview after the settlement was announced. ``Because now everyone will know what happened, and that human rights won out.''

In a telephone interview from Buenos Aires, the Argentine official in charge of the negotiations, Rodolfo A. Diaz, would say only that the two sides had come to a ``definitive agreement'' and that ``all of the disputes that there have been between them are now completely resolved.''

Because of the Argentine government's insistence on keeping details of the settlement confidential, it was unclear what impact the accord might have in Argentina, where Siderman was one of hundreds of victims of the military's so-called ``dirty war'' on leftist subversion still waiting for some sort of redress.

Legal experts said they were more sanguine, however, about the precedent that had been established with rulings by a federal appellate court and the U.S. Supreme Court that the case of a foreign government's abuse of one of its citizens could be tried in the United States.

``You have opened the door,'' said Anthony D'Amato, a professor of international law at the Northwestern University School of Law and a lawyer in a somewhat similar case that was thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1992. ``The court has held that there is jurisdiction, and that is very important.''

Lawyers for Siderman said a more specific signal had also been sent, because of the judgment that Argentina in 1981 had implicitly waived its immunity from prosecution here when it sought to file suit in an American court in its harassment of Siderman.

``The courts found that courts in this country had jurisdiction over Argentina after Argentina came after the Siderman family here,'' said Paul L. Hoffman, who joined Siderman's 14-year legal struggle on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

``The main message of this case to other governments is that if someone flees your country and comes to the United States, you had better not come after them.''