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"The history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including, it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them)."
Karl Popper1
In Argentina, between 1976 and 1983, thousands of people were secretly kidnapped and tortured in hundreds of detention centers throughout the country More than 10,000 people were murdered by a military regime that took control with widespread national and international support.2
Argentina's military dictatorship came to power through a coup d'etat to combat leftist guerrillas and attempt to solve the nation's severe economic crisis. The military dictatorship lasted until 1983, when a renewed economic crisis and Argentina's defeat in the war against United Kingdom over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands initiated a transition to democracy
Public trials were held in 1985 and 1986 to hold military officials responsible for the tortures and killings. In all, 481 military and police officers were indicted; 16 were tried-11 of whom were top-level officers-and 11 were convicted.
In 1990 President Carlos Menem ordered that these officers be pardoned and released, erasing the tentative gains for justice.
In this article, I seek to address the relationship between mass crimes and prosecution and their impact on democratic systems.
The absence of democratic institutions in Argentina allowed for these crimes to happen, and while the trials worked to strengthen Argentina's new-born democracy, they put that same democracy at risk.
While I believe the passage of the laws and the pardon which limited the reach of the prosecutions undermined the process of serving justice, I am convinced that no judge or system of justice can replace civil society's role in forging its own path toward justice. Punishment cannot be the only answer.
As a prosecutor in the trials of those responsible for state-- sponsored "disappearances" and systemic torture, I realized the limits of using a criminal justice system to prosecute gross violations of human rights. Crimes like those committed in Argentina during the so-called "Dirty War" were more complex than regular crimes: instead of upholding laws, authorities ordered them violated; law enforcement agencies committed crimes instead of preventing them; criminals were not isolated by society, but rather were supported by its elite; and finally, groups that the regime deemed problematic were systemically eliminated with no respect...