Alfredo Astiz - Kidnapping and Torture

Kidnapping and Torture

Using the false name of Gustavo Niño, Astiz specialized in infiltrating peaceful organisations protesting against extrajudicial execution, identifying their members and, after a sufficient number had been identified, kidnapping them. In 1982 a human rights lawyer named Martín Gras, a survivor of the many Astiz kidnapped, claimed that Astiz was a charming man who rarely tortured or murdered those he kidnapped but merely handed them on to others in the system. Yet Astiz was well thought of within the armed forces for his effective interrogation techniques, and in 1979 he was sent to the Argentine embassy in South Africa to give a series of seminars on torture techniques to the South African security police. While there, he also participated in a number of discussion groups to exchange ideas regarding methods of interrogation.

In 1977 Astiz kidnapped Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti, the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a non-violent group of mothers protesting against the disappearance of their children. Neither she, nor any of the other early members of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo kidnapped by Astiz on the same night, were ever seen again. While Astiz kidnapped hundreds of people during 1976 and 1977, it was his kidnap and mistreatment of three foreigners that was later to cause him minor inconvenience as a prisoner of war.

On January 27, 1977 Dagmar Hagelin, a 17-year-old girl having Swedish citizenship through her father, the Swedish citizen Ragnar-Erland Hagelin, who has been tirelessly battling to bring Astiz to justice since the early 1980s (her mother was an Argentine called Buccicardi), was shot and wounded by Astiz while attempting to escape; it is said that Astiz mistook her for a Montoneros activist to whom she bore some physical resemblance and who was a mutual acquaintance of fellow-activist Norma Susana Burgos. Witnesses saw her later at the ESMA torture center and alleged that Astiz was in charge of her interrogation. According to the Argentine Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs tasked to follow up Swedish complaints at the time of Hagelin's shooting and abduction, Captain Jorge Eduardo Acosta, the commander of GT332, stated "setting her free is out of the question. We must not give in to public opinion. We must appear strong" – apparently because of the seriousness of the injuries caused by Dagmar's shooting that had rendered her paralyzed, also affecting her cognitive abilities. Inés Carazzo, then a detainee enslaved and regularly raped by Captain Antonio Pernias, another GT332 officer, claims that Acosta ordered that Hagelin be put to death in a "death flight". Hagelin joined the ranks of the "disappeared" and is thought to have been killed and cremated at the ESMA. There is no direct evidence that Astiz had any part in the affair after shooting and kidnapping Hagelin, but there is also no evidence of who killed her, or even whether she was interrogated at all.

Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, two French nuns, were members of a support group for victims of forced disappearance which was infiltrated by Astiz. A forged photograph aimed at pretending that they had been kidnapped by the Peronist leftist group the Montoneros was leaked to the graphic media before their assassination. Astiz kidnapped them in December 1977 and was witnessed torturing them by beating them, immersing them in water and applying electrified cattle prods to their breasts and into their genitals and mouths. Their bodies were identified (along with that of Azucena Villaflor de Vicenti) by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, in August 2005.