Former Argentine ministers lose amnesty

An Argentine judge has overturned presidential pardons granted to senior ministers from the 1976-83 military dictatorship, opening the way for their trials on kidnapping-related charges. The federal judge, Norberto Oyarbide, found that amnesties handed out by former president Carlos Menem to José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, a former economy minister, and former interior minister Alvaro Harguindeguy were unconstitutional as the case involved crimes against humanity, a court official said. The two ministers were arrested and investigated for their role in the five-month abduction of two businessmen in the 1970s, but the case was dropped when the amnesties were granted in 1989 and 1990. Argentine tribunals have reopened investigations of hundreds of military and police officers accused of human rights violations during one of South America's most notorious periods after the Argentine supreme court last year annulled two broad amnesty laws. During the "dirty war," up to 30,000 people who were branded as subversives by the generals were abducted, tortured and later murdered–drugged, stripped naked and thrown alive from navy "death flights" over the Atlantic ocean. After democracy was restored, nine military leaders were tried in 1985. Five were convicted and sentenced to between four years and life in prison. Other trials followed, but in 1989 Menem banned further court action. The country's current president, Nestor Kirchner, who lost a number of friends during the "dirty war," has put his full weight behind a campaign to bring those responsible to justice. The former ministers, who are among the last remaining high-level dictatorship officials to avoid prosecution, were expected to appeal the decision. They have allegedly been connected to the abduction of a father and son, Federico and Miguel Gutheim, who ran a cotton export business.