BUENOS AIRES — It has taken a quarter of a century and the struggle is still far from over. But for Argentines who have yearned for punishment of military dictators who killed thousands of their countrymen, the jailing of dozens of suspects in the past two days has engendered expectations that truth and justice will finally triumph.
President Nestor Kirchner, in office for just two months, has made good on his threat to end a "culture of impunity" for the generals and admirals who waged a campaign of terror against leftists from 1976 to 1983. Human rights groups estimate that the "dirty war" claimed 30,000 lives.
On Friday, Kirchner revoked a ban on extradition of those sought by foreign courts on genocide charges, a day after stunning the military hierarchy by ordering the arrest of 46 suspects wanted by Spain.
Months, if not years, of legal wrangling remain ahead, but the swift moves of the new president heartened the families of junta victims whose suffering has been exacerbated by the knowledge that the perpetrators walked free.
"The news implies the commencement of justice and that our fight for historical memory has not been in vain," said Aurora Prados de Pisarello, the daughter of a human rights attorney who was kidnapped and tortured to death for challenging the junta.
The junta figure Pisarello holds responsible for her father's execution was not only at liberty but recently elected to public office. Retired Gen. Antonio Bussi won the mayor's job in the provincial capital of Tucuman on June 29 and survived a regional court challenge to his moral fitness for office.
Bussi, who was military governor of the northern province during the dictatorship, has been accused of genocide by a Spanish judge who sought the extraditions Kirchner has moved to fulfill. During Bussi's tenure, 2,000 young leftist guerrillas and other regime opponents disappeared and were presumed killed. Under Spanish law, genocide can be prosecuted in Spain even if the alleged crime was committed in another country.
Though a cloak of silence has covered many details of the regime's crimes, evidence has emerged over the years to suggest most victims were killed and buried in mass graves or dumped from military cargo planes into the Atlantic Ocean.
