Argentines protest threats Vs. witnesses

Argentines refusing to be cowed by death threats against witnesses, judges and lawyers in "dirty war" trials marched in the capital Thursday, marking four months since the disappearance of a man who testified against his torturers.

Jorge Julio Lopez vanished Sept. 18 after he described being jolted with electric prods by a former police chief and others in a secret prison more than two decades ago. Thanks in part to Lopez's willingness to speak up and even show his scars in court, the defendant was convicted and given a life sentence for six disappearances during the country's 1976-83 military dictatorship.

The regime targeted leftists, intellectuals and other opponents in the dirty war. At least 13,000 people were killed, although human rights groups put the toll closer to 30,000.

Argentina's leftist government is intent on trying as many as 900 lower-ranking former police and military officers for their roles in state-sponsored terrorism during the dictatorship, now that the Supreme Court has struck down amnesty laws that shielded all but top military leaders from prosecution.

As many as 2,000 witnesses are key to these trials, and their safety was at the heart of Thursday's protest that drew 2,000 people and snarled rush-hour traffic around the president's offices at Government House.

Demonstrators, who banged drums and carried banners with Lopez's picture, said they were delivering a petition supported by more than 100 human rights groups demanding a "full clarification" of Lopez's disappearance.

"The witnesses are at risk, a lot of risk," said Maria Adela Antokoletz, whose brother, Daniel, disappeared months after the outset of the dictatorship.

President Nestor Kirchner and top police officials blame shadowy groups sympathetic to the former military rulers for trying to sow fear as momentum grows for human rights trials. The backlash is expected to intensify as courts prepare for the "mega-case" involving the junta's largest torture camp at the Navy Mechanic's School, where some 5,000 people were held.

The government has offered to provide security for the torture survivors and even relocate their entire families through witness protection programs. But many are afraid to accept protection from security forces once used in state repression.

"It's complicated and I don't know what the government will do," said Hilda Velasco, whose 29-year-old daughter disappeared in 1976. "There are witnesses who don't want any police protection and others who accept it."

Lopez shrugged off police protection, as did a second witness after he went missing for two days in December.

Kirchner has declared that finding Lopez alive is a top priority. But his government was criticized by human rights groups as being slow to react to the case. So officials made a very public response to the Dec. 27 disappearance of Luis Gerez, a 51-year-old construction worker who accused a prominent politician, retired police officer Luis Abelardo Patti, of torturing him in 1972.

Kirchner ordered an intense manhunt and commanded Argentina's airwaves for a live national address in which he squarely blamed both disappearances on "former police and military agents who want to intimidate, pursuing their goal of maintaining impunity."

Hours later, Gerez's still-unidentified captors threw him, alive, from a car. Relatives later said he had been beaten and burned with cigarettes. A low-level activist in Kirchner's wing of the Peronist party, Gerez has enemies because his testimony prevented Patti from taking a congressional seat. But he too declined police protection.

Lopez, 77, is a former laborer who provided investigators with names of victims, descriptions of torture and the names or nicknames of the police who ran a torture center in La Plata during the dictatorship.

Now, even pre-dictatorship atrocities in Argentina are being scrutinized. Two federal judges want former President Isabel Peron extradited from Spain for questioning about the right-wing death squads she allegedly approved before being ousted in the military coup.

The marchers Thursday offered witnesses their support and urged them not to be intimidated.

"They must have Lopez hidden somewhere. They want to instill fear in us," said Juanita Paracament, a 92-year-old member of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. "They don't want the witnesses to speak out. But the witnesses will continue to speak out."