The United States House of Representatives gave preliminary approval today to a project that instructs the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to declassify secret archives to assist in the search for children of the “disappeared” during the last military dictatorship in Argentina, as announced today by the Argentine Ambassador Hector Timerman.
The Argentine representative in Washington made the announcement tonight in Buenos Aires, after meeting with President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner in her office at the government house. Timerman said in a press conference in the Casa Rosada that preliminary approval of the project, “was unanimous among republican and democrat representatives,” and included, “the opening of secret archives about themes linked to the coup of 1976, to Operation Condor, and the appropriation of babies in Argentina.”
The United States’ law amendment was presented by New York Representative Maurice Hinchey, “with the goal for Argentina to reopen the judicial process on violations of human rights.”
Hinchey met last January with the president together with other legislators of his country and the chief of state, “asking them on that occasion to declassify the intelligence documents of the United States,” informed Timerman.
“The legislator had previously presented a project to open archives of the coup in Chile,” remarked the ambassador and added that the General Director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, already had revealed to him that, “he would not object to turning over the documentation.”
In the presentation that Hinchey made to the lower house of his country, he solicited his colleagues to “accompany” the means to contribute to “truth and justice in Argentina.”
In addition, he said that the law, “would solicit the CIA to submit all the information that they possess about human rights violations to the House and Senate committees of information, and any other information about the children born in captivity as a result of Operation Condor.”
Others that participated in the press conference: Secretary of Human Rights Eduardo Luis Duhalde; the head of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto; also from the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Rosa Rosembik; and members of the Grandchildren Group, Maria Victoria Donda and Juan Cabandie.
Duhalde explained that four years ago partial declassification of the secret archives was reached and that “they helped a lot,” using as an example that, “until 1978 they had 22,000 registered disappearances, numbers that agree with the victims that suffered genocide,” in the last military dictatorship.
On her part, Carlotto referred to this amendment: “It shall allow [us] to know the destiny of the appropriated children, what were their destinies, and where were they abandoned,” and she expressed that Operation Condor, “also had disappeared babies, not only adults.”
Meanwhile, Donda celebrated the initiative, “as able to reveal the information that might help find the 400 children that are missing,” and considered, “the truth shall free them and us because one cannot be happy if one is not free.”
Framed in the request for the American legislators to consider this measure, Timerman exhibited last May to the American Congress the award-winning video by Telam of the 2007 National Prize of Journalism: “Madres Y Abuelas 30 anos de buscandote” (Mothers and Grandmothers: 30 Years of Searching for You).
The material lasted 20 minutes and was made with the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Cordoba subdivision and helped the legislators and the American public to be aware of the human rights violations in Argentina.
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