Part I
The Repression

Nunca Más (Never Again) - Report of Conadep  - 1984
 

Falsification of documents

According to testimonies, the terrorist apparatus had an administrative structure which falsified documents for use in carrying out new unlawful activities.

Evidence of this is shown in the operation of the detention centre established at the Navy Mechanics School.

The testimonies of Miriam Lewin de García (file No. 2365), Lázaro Jaime Gladstein (file No. 4912) and Victor Melchor Basterra (file No. 5011) indicate that as arrested-disappeared' they had to work in the basement of the officers' mess at the Navy Mechanics School, where a printing press used for the production of false documentation operated, producing 'passports, identity cards, property deeds, driving licences, credentials for the Federal Police, university degrees, etc.'

This unlawful behaviour was important in facilitating the carrying out of other crimes detailed in this report: the sale of properties, use of stolen vehicles, use of houses belonging to the disappeared, entry and exit from the country of task force members and their infiltration into different sectors and activities of society.

This is corroborated in the declarations made by Lázaro Jaime Gladstein (flle No. 4912):

The task they had to carry out ... consisted of falsifying documents. The documentation which had to be falsified was official and comprised diplomatic passports, ordinary passports, identity cards and drivers' licences for Buenos Aires province.

Victor Melchor Basterra (file No. 5011) recalls: 

He was given jobs in documentation from mid-January, which were operated in Section 4 in the basement. Documentation was made there with different forms for various types of personal documents - identity cards, driving licences, passports, federal police and naval identity cards ... In this way, if a given member of a task force needed false documents, a list of 'doubles' was consulted, and the most similar one was chosen, for example by age. Then a whole set of false documents was made as required for the force member, but including the data of the other person....