After 45 years, Argentina brings to justice those who covered up the dictatorship's death flights International

In December 1978, strong southeast winds pulled a dozen bodies from the sea to various beaches in Argentina. They were naked and showed signs of violent death. But none of these cases resulted in a judicial investigation; Instead, they were secretly transported to nearby cemeteries and buried as “NN” (unidentified persons). Police, judges and local officials acted in coordination to prevent it from becoming known that they were victims of the death flights used by the dictatorship to dispose of the bodies of kidnapped people. More than 45 years later, the Argentine judiciary brought the alleged perpetrators of this cover-up network to justice for the first time.

“The bodies were found scattered along an approximately 150-kilometer-long coastal strip,” says Daniel Iglesias, the author of a study that provided the first clues to clarify what happened. Iglesias found more than 20 files on bodies brought back from sea between 1977 and 1978 and buried without identification. “In neither case were police sent to see if a relative could be found, nor was the press called or anything possible was done to identify the body. The judge did nothing, even though it was his responsibility,” added Iglesias from Villa Gesell, one of the towns where victims of the death flights were washed up.

The defendants in the case are the then coroner of the city of Dolores, Carlos Facio; the police doctor Miguel Cabral, who is accused of concealing in four files that they had been victims of a violent death; seven former Buenos Aires police agents and municipal officials. After a preliminary hearing last week, the first witnesses will testify on Thursday and the rest will testify early next year in a trial to be held in the city of Mar del Plata.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Pablo Llonto, emphasizes the importance of a trial that will shed light on the final phase of the systematic extermination plan implemented by the dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. The courts have convicted over 1,000 people, mostly military personnel, for crimes against humanity committed during this period. The military regime opened hundreds of secret detention centers across the country, and in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas, one of the most common methods of getting rid of kidnapped people was to put them on planes and throw them, drugged and tied up, into the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean.

A woman tries to prevent police from arresting a young man during an anti-government protest in Buenos Aires in the final days of Argentina's Dirty War.Horacio Villalobos (Getty Images)

Due to misjudgment of winds and tides, some of these bodies did not end up on the seabed but were washed ashore. The courts must now determine the defendants' alleged responsibility for their hiding. “They hid them knowing they were from the Death Flights,” Llonto explained.

One of the bodies that remained unidentified for three decades was that of Santiago Villanueva, a member of the Juventud Peronista group who was kidnapped on July 26, 1978. His eldest son Guillermo was 12 years old at the time. “I spent my whole life looking for him and I never thought we would find him,” he says, recalling a disappearance that shaped the lives of his entire family.

57-year-old Guillermo Villanueva is preparing to testify before a judge for the third time in his life. He still remembers with some disbelief the moment the Argentine forensic anthropology team told him they had identified his father's remains. The DNA of the remains exhumed from the Villa Gesell cemetery matched that of his uncle Ernesto Villanueva, the brother of the missing man. The forensic anthropologists knew where to dig thanks to a notebook from the cemetery in which they wrote down by hand where each deceased was buried. Santiago Villanueva was listed as “Saladito NN.” “They called the bodies that came out of the sea 'saladitos,'” says Guillermo.

The identification took place in 2005 and in 2006 the remains were returned to him, which now rest in the Chacarita Cemetery, the largest in Buenos Aires. “He was whole except for his hands. “It was shocking to have the opportunity to see him for the last time,” remembers Guillermo. “After 30 years, I was with him for 15 minutes, and then the story began to change: from a missing person to a found person. “I understood why I had struggled for so many years to keep the memory alive and how I could restore my family’s dignity when I found him,” he continues. His goal now is to ensure that justice is served. What he would most like, however, is for his companions to also recover the remains of their still missing relatives. “There are very few of us who have been lucky enough to find them,” he concludes.