On 10 November 1976 at 8.30a.m. six heavily armed men in civilian clothes who identified themselves as members of the Security Forces broke into our home. They made us lie on the floor, beat my husband and handcuffed our hands behind our backs. For more than an hour they went through the flat with a fine-toothed comb and then took away personal documents, professional material and correspondence, a large number of books, photographs, etc.
When we arrived at our destination, we went down two levels of cellars and were then separated and interrogated. During my first, brief interrogation I could hear from the next cell the continuous cries of pain of a girl being tortured by beatings and an electric prod. Then everything stopped and I clearly heard the words: 'We went a bit over the top with the blonde, mate.' During the interrogation they told me they thought I didn't have anything to do with the problem and that I would probably be released and put at the disposition of the National Executive. They did not think my husband belonged to any armed organization either, but believed he was dangerous since his work as defence counsel for political prisoners and human rights made him an ideologue for subversive forces. He was internationally recognized in legal circles as a defence lawyer.
They stressed, as another unfavourable and unpleasant factor, that he was Jewish.
This was not true, and I told them he was not.
I believe the place where my husband and I were held was the Navy Mechanics School, or more precisely, the Navy NCOs School (a building separated from the rest by a road).
I asked continually to see my husband or to know where he was. On the morning of Saturday the 13th, one of the guards took me - with many precautions - to a room and said I could see him. He told me not to tell anyone as it would get him into serious trouble. Someone else brought my husband in and we were allowed to take off our hoods and blindfolds and see each other for about a minute. In this short time I could see that he had been badly tortured. He had great difficulty in walking and they had used the electric prod on his testicles and gums. They then took me back, and I have heard nothing of him since.
I was released in the early morning of 17 November.
I made an immediate statement of the facts to the army Commander-in-Chief, the 1st Army Corps in Palermo, the Federal Police, the Ministry of the Interior, the Military Chaplaincy, The President of the Permanent Commission of the Argentine Episcopal Assembly (Monsignor Raúl Primatesta), Amnesty International, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, the OAS Human Rights Commission, the UN Commission for Human Rights and other official and unofficial bodies and individuals, Argentine and foreign. Five writs of habeas corpus were presented to provincial and federal courts. Neither these measures (official or unofficial) nor the recourse to the courts, have to date had any result. Even today I don't know if my husband is alive or dead.
I want to emphasize that since 1972 my husband dedicated himself to the defence of political prisoners - among them ex-Senator Enrique R. Erro of Uruguay - and the fight for the respect of human rights. He never for a moment concealed his activities or his address.
He was a university lecturer, lawyer, well-known international jurist, a member of the American Institute Of International Legal Studies, and a founder member of the Argentine International Law
Association.
