IPU Jubilant at Justice for Tortured Argentinian MPs after nearly 40 years

Argentinian MP Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen finally sees justice after nearly 40 years. © H. Solari Yrigoyen

IPU is rejoicing after the human rights cases of Argentinian MPs have finally seen justice after 37 years.

Two men who worked at the notorious Rawson prison in Argentina during the 1970s have been sentenced after being found guilty of torturing former Argentinian MP Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen and torture resulting in the death of fellow MP Mario Abel Amaya.

Osvaldo Jorge Fano, head of the penitentiary in Rawson, was sentenced to 23 years in jail while prison warder Jorge Osvaldo Steding was condemned to 17 years in detention. Luis Eduardo García, a doctor at the prison at the time of the crimes, was also sentenced to two years for concealment of torture.

The cases of Solari Yrigoyen and Amaya were among the first to be taken up by IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians following their arrest by military authorities in August 1976. At the time, the Argentinian parliament had been dissolved after a military junta seized control of the country under General Jorge Videla.

Both MPs were brutally beaten in detention before being transferred to Rawson prison in Patagonia where they were tortured and again subjected to merciless beatings. The inhumane treatment led to the death of 42-year-old Amaya on 19 October 1976.

As a result of intense international pressure, not least by IPU, Solari Yrigoyen was released in May 1977. He was immediately expelled from Argentina and sent to Venezuela.

Solari Yrigoyen was a fervent human rights campaigner and later became a member and then President of IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians. The Committee was established in large part as a reaction to the dissolution of several parliaments in South America during the 1970s and the arbitrary arrest and mistreatment of many MPs from the continent.

“After turning to IPU’s human rights Committee when he himself was a victim, Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen played a leading role in helping to prevent fellow MPs around the world falling victim to the abuse he suffered,” said IPU Secretary General Anders B. Johnsson. “His actions symbolize the very idea of parliamentary solidarity that underpins the work of the Committee. Unlike other international and regional mechanisms, the Committee pursues the examination of a case until there is some kind of satisfactory settlement, even if it means years of involvement.”

Between 15,000 and 30,000 of opponents of the military regime in Argentina were rounded up and ‘disappeared’ in the 'Dirty War' from 1976 to 1983.