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10 Yale J. Int'l L. 118 (1984-1985)
Dictatorship on Trial: Prosecution of Human Rights Violations in Argentina

handle is hein.journals/yjil10 and id is 126 raw text is: Dictatorship on Trial: Prosecution of Human
Rights Violations in Argentina
Emilio Fermin Mignonet
Cynthia L. Estlundtt
Samuel Issacharoffttt
Between 1976 and 1983, a military dictatorship ruled Argentina and
brought that country into an era of state-directed terror aimed at the
civilian population. During that period, a small and vulnerable human
rights community, allied with international backers, attempted to stay
the hand of the military state and provide a measure of protection for the
victims and potential victims of the dictatorship. The struggle was to
defend the most elementary of human rights: freedom from arbitrary
detention, torture, and summary execution. While the stakes in this
struggle were high-life or death for thousands of individuals-it was
nonetheless an unfortunately familiar effort to define the limits of what a
state may inflict on its citizens.
With the election of a civilian government in October 1983, however,
this battle moved onto the unfamiliar ground of setting an affirmative
agenda for the trial and punishment of those responsible for acts of state
terror. With little guidance from Argentine history or the experience of
other countries in the transition from military to civilian rule, and with
the constant rumblings of future military uprisings as a backdrop, the
restored civilian political and legal institutions turned to the issue that
would dominate the first year of civilian rule: the prosecution of the
military.
The assumption of power by the civilian authorities did not terminate
the impact of the military period on the fledgling government. The pecu-
liar method of repression perfected by the Argentine military-disap-
pearance without a trace into a parallel, extralegal police and military
network-left behind tens of thousands of family members and friends of
t Director, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) (Center for Legal and Social
Studies), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
ft Attorney, Sugarman & Hellegers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
ttt Attorney, Kirschner, Walters, Willig, Weinberg & Dempsey, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
Ms. Estlund and Mr. Issacharoff represented the Lawyers Committee for International
Human Rights in Argentina in 1984 through a grant from the J. Roderick MacArthur
Foundation.

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