A member of the Human Rights Institute of Uruguay testified in the city of La Plata in the trial unified by the crimes committed against almost 500 captive victims in three former clandestine centersprovided information on “clandestine flights with military crews” between the two countries and requested collaboration to find out what happened to several Uruguayan detainees who were interrogated by soldiers from that same nation.
This is Walter Washington Pernás Pereira, who testified today before the Federal Oral Court 1 of La Plata, that since October 2020 he has tried 16 repressors, including former police doctor Jorge Berges, for crimes committed in the Pozo de Banfield, Pozo of Quilmes and El Infierno, in Lanús.
The specialist explained that She is part of a team in charge of investigating what happened in Argentina with Uruguayan citizens during the dictatorship of that country and the one here.
“On September 18, 2019, a law was approved in the Uruguayan Parliament that forced the Institute of Human Rights to look for the disappeared in the framework of the dictatorship and this team was formed that works with human sources, that is, they had to go out to look for testimonies of people who provide data that until now is not available,” Pernás Pereira specified before TOF 1.
In this regard, he noted that it is “a race against time because we go out looking for people who have passed away”.
“The dictatorship in Uruguay ended in 1985 but there was no Judgment of the Boards as in Argentina, we had an expiration law that slowed down our investigation,” he said.
The Uruguayan researcher recognized that “We don’t know if we will find the remains of the disappeared, but we will reconstruct the truth.”
“Still in pandemic We managed to conduct 120 interviews with military personnel, civilians, qualified witnesses, relatives, relatives and sources of context. We are following new lines of investigation for Uruguay,” he said enthusiastically, noting that information is sought on “197 to 200 disappeared”.
Likewise, he specified that in the data he recounts “there comes a time, between May 16 and 18, 1978, when they tell us ‘we stopped seeing Uruguayans’ (in those former Argentine clandestine centers) and there is no further explanation or they allude to that they were ‘transferred on clandestine flights’ to Uruguay, without us having documentary proof to affirm it”.
“That is why I want to ask the Courts for help, to be able to access all the data from the Argentine courts. We are on the path to truth,” he said.
Pernás Pereira spoke about the discovery of a “book of notes of the flights during the Uruguayan dictatorship”, that were carried out in Douglas C47 aircraft, and whose crew always included 3 Uruguayan soldiers.
He also provided information on the destination of those flightsbetween one country and another: the Carrasco air base, Ezeiza, the Quilmes Aerodrome, the El Palomar Airport and also specified that there is an acronym indicating “unknown landing place”.
“Comparing the number of flights before and after the dictatorship, the increase in frequencies breaks the eyes,” he stressed and clarified that “it is partial information” about a type of flight that was carried out at that time.
Using filmstrips, specified the flights between the two countries between December 1977 and September 1979highlighting that “after the closure of the Pozo de Banfield and Pozo de Quilmes clandestine centers, the flights ended at the El Palomar air base (in Uruguay), where a clandestine center operated.”
“I appreciate what is being done here (in this trial) to clarify these cases (of Uruguayans detained in these former centers) because coordination between the two countries is important. We need to unravel this situation not only from Uruguay,” Pernás Pereira said and said that “There are Argentine soldiers who are silent about this situation that was cut between May 16 and 20, 1978.”
Along these lines, he stated that “the Institution would like to see a focus on what happened to the Uruguayans, because I understand the search for criminal responsibility, we are concerned with the reconstruction of the truth and the remains; and if something can collaborate, we will be grateful to them”.
During this hearing also declared Luis Armestowho waskidnapped along with his father Julio, a former deputy from Buenos Aires in 1973, at Pozo de Banfield, where both suffered torture.
“I made a promise a long time ago and that’s why I’m here. My father was very beaten and I told him that whichever of the two came out alive, the first one to come out alive should be brought to justice to testify so that this doesn’t happen again,” he said excitedly.
He remarked that “that is why I have this willpower to come here, that is my internal motor. I still do not understand, and I will say a phrase that a military man who was detained wrote in his book ´My Testimonial´, I am referring to Agustín Lanusse” and He added that: “He said ´there are beings so aberrant and so low that if I had not known them I would never have believed in their existence'”.
“I say that sentence of Lanusse and to finish the sentence of prosecutor Strassera, Never Again,” concluded Armesto.
TOF 1, chaired by Ricardo Basilico, judges the former Minister of the Buenos Aires Government during the dictatorship, Jaime Smart, for the crimes committed in the Pozo de Banfield, the Pozo de Quilmes and El Infierno; former police doctor Jorge Antonio Berges and the accused Federico Minicucci; Carlos María Romero Pavón, Roberto Balmaceda and Jorge Di Pasquale.
He also began judging Guillermo Domínguez Matheu; Ricardo Fernandez; Charles Fontana; Emilio Herrero Anzorena; Carlos Hidalgo Garzon; Antonio Simon; Enrique Barre; Eduardo Samuel de Lío and Alberto Condiotti.
