I / A Court HR condemned Argentina for the forced disappearance of a couple during the dictatorship

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the State of Argentina on Tuesday for the forced disappearance of the marriage of Mario Roger Julien Cáceres and Victoria Lucía Grisonas Andrijauskaite, which occurred in a police and military operation during the dictatorship in Argentina in 1976.

The judgment, notified to the parties today, indicates the international responsibility of the State for the violation of the rights to recognition of legal personality, life, personal integrity and personal liberty.

The Court determined that the events occurred in the context of the military government established in Argentina between 1976-1983, a period in which a systematic and generalized plan of human rights violations was implemented and executed.

“The various repressive activities carried out during the period of the military government in Argentina included the systematic and generalized practice of abduction, retention and concealment of children, after the disappearance or execution of their parents. Likewise, it was determined that the events occurred within the framework of Operation Condor ”, explains the sentence.

The case dates back to September 26, 1976, when a police and military operation was carried out at the Julien-Grisonas family home, located in the town of San Martín, province of Buenos Aires.

Mario Roger Julien Cáceres, a Uruguayan national, had taken refuge in Argentina for political reasons in 1973 as a result of the coup in Uruguay. Julien was illegally detained, wounded and seen for the last time on the day of the military operation, apparently dead, according to the complaint filed with the Inter-American Court.

For her part, Victoria Grisonas was also illegally detained, brutally beaten in broad daylight in front of her son and neighbors, and taken to the Automotores Orletti center, one of the clandestine detention and torture centers used in the framework of Operation Condor. according to the complaint made.

The couple’s children, Anatole and Victoria, were smuggled to Chile and abandoned in a plaza in Valparaíso, where they were later adopted. Their paternal grandmother, after years of intense search, located them and they were the first missing children recovered.

The international court also established that Argentina violated the rights to judicial guarantees and judicial protection, to the detriment of Anatole and Victoria, as well as their right to know the truth about the whereabouts and destination of the remains of their biological father and mother.

In the judgment, the Court highlighted the “excessive and unjustified delay in the processing of the proceedings, the lack of prosecution and punishment of the acts committed against Cáceres, the delay in classifying the crime of forced disappearance, the scant search and location of the victims. Graubünden remains and the failure to meet the requirements formulated to advance in the search for the Cáceres remains ”.

Likewise, the Inter-American Court determined the violation of the right to personal integrity of Anatole and Victoria, as a consequence of the acts perpetrated against their family.

In the judgment, the Court ordered various measures of reparation to the Argentine State, such as payment for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, clarifying the facts perpetrated against Cáceres, carrying out a serious search and with due diligence of the whereabouts of Grisonas and providing a response to the requests formulated by Anatole to continue in the search for his remains.

In addition, to take steps to summon the other States that have had intervention in the execution of the facts of the case and in the context of Operation Condor, in order to form a working group that coordinates the possible efforts to carry out the tasks of investigation, extradition, prosecution and punishment of those responsible for the serious crimes committed. (I)