BUENOS AIRES—On the afternoon of May 25, María Alejandra Bonafini—the 35-year-old daughter of Hebe Bonafini, president of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo—was tortured by two men who entered her home in the city of La Plata, in Buenos Aires province. Hebe Bonafini, who lives at the home of her daughter, was at a conference in Brazil at the time. The attackers identified themselves as telephone repairmen; Alejandra Bonafini let them into the house because she had called previously to request telephone line repairs. The assailants blindfolded her, tied her hands with tape, beat her with a rubber hose (or a chain or stick covered in rubber), and burned her with cigarettes until she passed out. After she regained consciousness they covered her head with a nylon or plastic bag and suffocated her nearly to death in what is known as the “dry submarine,” a torture commonly used by Argentine security forces during the brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship. The attackers searched the house but did not take anything; they finally left after someone called them over a two-way radio and apparently gave them instructions.
The older Bonafini learned of the attack after returning home on May 27. “It’s clear that our phones are tapped, because these guys knew that we had requested telephone repair service,” said Bonafini. “They are police agents. They beat my daughter and didn’t take anything from the house. They know that I won’t shut my mouth and that’s why they persecute us.” The activist’s two sons were disappeared during the regime’s dirty war against leftist activists; Alejandra is her only living child.
At a press conference the next day, May 28, Bonafini blamed the government for allowing the continued impunity of those who tortured and killed during the military regime; she warned other activists to be careful, because “as long as these monsters are free, this is going to keep happening.”
Human rights groups and families of the dictatorship’s victims did have one reason to celebrate, however. On July 2, former Navy captain Alfredo Astiz, a symbol of the impunity of the 1976-1983 dictatorship, was arrested in Buenos Aires at the request of an Italian court, on charges related to the disappearance of three Italian citizens.
Argentine judge María Servina de Cubría ordered the preventive arrest of Astiz, although it is unsure whether he will be extradited to Italy, given the precedents of the Argentine government’s protection for military leaders in similar cases.
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