Argentine President Javier Milei is having a bad week. He is embroiled in a national scandal at home, after six congressmen from his Liberty Advances party (LLA) on July 11 visited military prisoners that were convicted of heinous human rights crimes, during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. This was an incredible affront to the Argentine people, 30,000 of whose citizens are officially classified as “disappeared” by fascist terror squads that ran rampant during that period. A majority of Argentines were personally affected by the crimes of the dictatorship, and discussion of this is a sensitive and emotional issue. Thus, the current situation has evolved into a huge scandal.
Particularly horrifying was that one of those visited, was Navy Lt. Alfredo Astiz, aka “the exterminating angel” of the Navy Mechanics School. His numerous crimes include the 1977 murder of two French nuns, who were tortured for 10 days after their capture, sedated and then thrown alive into the Rio de la Plata from a plane. This was a standard practice and many prisoners lost their lives on these “death flights.” In France, Astiz was tried in absentia and convicted of the murder of the two nuns. French human rights lawyers, representing the families of other French citizens who disappeared in Argentina, demanded that President Emmanuel Macron repudiate the visit to the convicted murderers by the LLA parliamentarians.
