Argentine torture defendant may have been silenced

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A former coast guard officer found dead in jail days before the verdict in his trial for torture may have been killed to keep him from talking about human rights violations during Argentina's 1976-1983 dirty war, a judge's resolution said.

Hector Febres, defendant in a high-profile human rights case, died Dec. 10 of cyanide poisoning in the comfortable suite where he was held in a coast guard complex.

Judge Sandra Arroyo ordered the arrest of two coast guard officials who were his jailers, accusing them of giving Febres' killers access to the area, a court source told Reuters.

The judge wrote in a resolution that the motive was: "to silence one who tried to reveal data or information about the facts surrounding the human rights violations during the last military government."

Febres was on trial for torturing political prisoners in Argentina's most infamous clandestine detention center, the Naval Mechanics School, or ESMA, during the military government's crackdown on leftists and dissidents.

Originally Argentine media speculated Febres had committed suicide ahead of the Dec. 14 verdict in his case, when he was expected to be found guilty.

Febres pleaded not guilty during his trial, but had recently told family and a priest friend he was planning to talk at his sentencing about crimes committed by the military because he was feeling like a scapegoat, according to the judge's resolution.

Febres may have been intending to provide information about what happened to babies born in captivity during the dirty war and illegally given out for adoption under fake names.

"There is evidence (Febres) had made a clear decision to reveal his part in the illegal repression and perhaps the destination of children born in captivity," the judge's resolution said, according to the source.

Security officials have maintained an almost absolute silence about rights violations during the dictatorship when some 11,000 people were killed according to an official report, or as many as 30,000 according to human rights groups.

In 2006, a witness in an earlier human rights trial -- which led to a life sentence for a former police commissioner -- disappeared and is still missing in what many believe was an effort to intimidate witnesses at future trials.

Under former President Nestor Kirchner courts turned over earlier amnesties for dirty war crimes. Kirchner's wife, current President Cristina Fernandez, has pledged to continue making human rights justice a priority.

The Kirchners were student activists in the 1970s and friends of the couple were killed during the military regime.