took a special interest in me, I was one of the first Argentine detainees to be allowed to leave the country under what is called the right of option.

But, I wanted to discuss today our experiences as attorneys practicing in a country where torture is a very common, very widespread practice. And, I'd like to say that the context in which I graduated and started working on this field was one in which another military government was in power in Argentina, and there had been very serious disturbances toward 1969, mostly, and the beginning of the work of subversive organizations bent on the violent overthrow of the government.

As a response, the military government established a state of seige and arrested hundreds of people, some charged with violent offenses, and others basically held under state of seige provisions.

Almost all of them were tortured, and those were our clients. As soon as someone was detained, what we would do as lawyers was to try to establish the whereabouts of the detainees in order to stop torture, which we knew that very possibly was already happening.

Many times, that meant that we had to wake up judges in the middle of the night, and ask them to make inquiries by telephone or by telegram, or even in person, in police headquarters or in security facilities.

That was an effective way to at least put some limits on torture because those who had the prisoner in their power knew that at some point or other they were going to have to show the prisoner to a judge, and account for whatever physical mistreatment he had suffered.

Our object in doing this was both to stop the torture, but also to see if we could exclude evidence that might have been obtained under duress.

And, of course, a third objective was to try to prosecute, to discover evidence that would lead to the prosecution of torturers.

In this sense, especially in the early seventies, I think we were successful in the first two objectives. Generally, I think, we did put some limits on the extent and the nature of the torture.

We were also partly successful in some cases in having evidence thrown out of court because it had been obtained under duress. But we were woefully unsuccessful in obtaining prosecution of torturers, and I think that this de facto immunity for torturers played a very important role in what came afterward, when the military took over the government in 1976, and a total breakdown of the rule of law made it possible for torture to be much more widespread.

In the course of this, we joined organizations. We tried to get the bar associations to work with us, and the more that we did this, the more the security authorities and the military viewed many of us, and the organizations that we formed, as fronts for the subversion or organizations that were doing public work for the guerrillas.

This was basically not true. But, it is true that many of my colleagues did contribute to that perception by using a very politicized rhetoric. And, I think that is one of the shortcomings of those years, although I think the balance of our work was positive because we did put limits on torture and we saved many lives.

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I think the fact that we saw our work as of a political nature, and that we allowed ourselves to be isolated and identified with the guerrilla movement, rather than reaching out into the mainstream of society, made it possible for the military government, and even before that, for the Government of Isabel Peron, to persecute lawyers as a distinct target of repression, and also made it possible in the first, I would say, 2 years of the military government, 1976 and 1977, to have thousands of disappeared persons and security detainees almost all of whom were regularly tortured.

At that time, there was no one to defend them; there was no one to present habeas corpus', and for a good period of time, there was just no recourse to any defense.

But, fortunately, little by little, a new and very vigorous human rights movement was born out of those ashes, without much contact with the earlier group.

The new groups were formed in 1978 and 1979, when the peaks of repression were very high, and you are familiar with some of them. There are now eight distinct human rights organizations in Argentina, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo being the most wellknown.

And one of them especially, the Center for Legal and Social Studies, concentrates specifically on providing legal assistance and on documenting abuses of human rights.

It has a staff of attorneys that have basically taken up the work of the lawyers that practiced in the early seventies.

I think they have taken their task with at least as much commitment and courage as the lawyers of the early seventies, but with at least a couple of very significant improvements over their work. One is that although these lawyers, each of them has a political point of view, they make very clear that they work as lawyers and their work in human rights organizations is completely separate and distinct from their work with political organizations.

In fact, they generally belong to different political parties, and yet work together. They also enjoy and cultivate strong links to the international human rights movement, which gives them access to remedies of an international nature that was not our practice back in the seventies.

And, at the same time, they have achieved a much higher degree of organization that allows them to obtain funding, both in Argentina and abroad, and to make a much better use of staff and volunteer help by other pro bono lawyers.

I think the work of these organizations, especially the lawyers among them, was instrumental in putting limits to the repression in the eighties, that is towards the latter years of the military dictatorship, especially in 1982, after the Malvinas/Falklands fiasco, when the military was already in disarray.

It was possible for these organizations basically to curb and almost eliminate all forms of torture. In the sense that when there were arrests and incidents of torture in those years, there was so much publicity around them and there was so much pressure put on the Government that these actions were effectively stopped.

So the lawyers in Argentina now have concentrated on another aspect, that has generally not received as much focus, as much attention in other countries as it is receiving now in Argentina.

And, that is the question of effectuating the criminal liability for torture and other violators of human rights.

In that sense, the lawyers in Argentina are now gathering information and documenting it, and supplying it both to the National Commission on Disappeared Persons that President Alfonsin created, and in order to

Mr. YATRON. Mr. Mendez, I don't want to interrupt you, but I think we're going to have to try to keep the summaries a little shorter because we are running out of time, and we'd like to have time for each of the panelists

Mr. MENDEZ. Yes, I am finishing, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.

Mr. YATRON. I wish we had more time.

Mr. MENDEZ. In another 30 seconds, I can wrap up.

I think this latter aspect of the work is very important, and it should deserve the attention of you, Mr. Chairman, and the other members of this body in the sense that I think effective criminal liability for violations of human rights especially when you're talking of crimes against humanity, is not only a demand of justice, but it's also an effective way of making torture not happen in other countries, and in the same country as well.

Therefore, I would only urge this subcommittee to look into ways in which you could support not only actions to stop incidents of torture as they are occurring, but also efforts to establish criminal prosecutions and investigations.

Thank you.

[Mr. Mendez' prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JUAN E. MENDEZ, DIRECTOR OF THE WASHINGTON OFFICE, AMERICAS WATCH

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to share my experience with this Subcommittee. My name is Juan Ernesto Mendez, and I am an attorney admitted to practice both in my native country, Argentina and in Washington, D.C. I have worked on human rights virtually without interruption since my graduation in Argentina in 1970. I am presently the Director of Americas Watch, a private human rights organization.

Like many other lawyers of my generation, I was involved in the 1970's in the defense of political prisoners and persons charged with security offenses. Almost invariably, the defendants in these cases were tortured in the course of interrogation, so our work as attorneys included investigation those episodes, obtaining evidence about them and seeking their prosecution. In turn, many of us became targets for repression in the hands of the security forces. I was arrested in August of 1975 by the Police of the Province of Buenos Aires, and handed over to a special intelligence unit of that force. This group of people took me to four different locations in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, which I could not identify because I was blindfolded and handcuffed. For the first three days, my arrest was not acknowledged. On the first day alone, I underwent five half-hour sessions of torture with electric shock and physical beatings. The next two days I was held in a small cell, without food and water and under constant threats; the only medical attention consisted of cursory examinations to determine whether I could still endure more torture. Finally, through the efforts of my family and colleagues, a habeas corpus proceeding succeeded in forcing the police to acknowledge my arrest, and the torture sessions were stopped.

The five sessions of picana (electric prod) were conducted with a sophisticated version of the cattle prod, especially designed to torture humans. The prod itself is connected to a machine that allows the user to regulate the intensity of the electric shock. I was stripped naked and tied, spread-eagled, on a table, and the prod was repeatedly applied to all sensitive parts of my body, including genitalia, my mouth, the back of my head. Each application produces undescribable pain, and in the following hours, they cause serious sensory altercation. While the head of the group

used the picana on me, other members interrogated me about my clients, my_colleagues, and my contacts with the undergound. They especially wanted to know how we learned of arrests and how we were able to file complaints and habeas corpus petitions hours after someone had been arrested. I am fortunate to say that I was able to withhold from them any information that might have led to the arrest and torture of another person.

After my arrest was "legalized", the police brought charges of car theft and possession of weapons that were summarily dismissed for lack of any evidence. Nonetheless, the government of Isabel Peron placed me under administrative detention by virtue of the state of siege then in effect, and I remained in prison for eighteen months without charges. The military government that took over in March of 1976 refused to allow me to go into exile under the "right of option" established in the Argentine Constitution for cases of arrests under the state of siege. At that time, my family and friends in the United States organized a campaign to release me. I was adopted by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience" and several members of the U.S. Congress made inquiries on my behalf. Finally, in February of 1977, I was allowed to go into exile. I was only able to return to my country after the elections last October.

I began practicing law at a time when Argentina was governed by the Armed Forces, and political opposition against them was mounting. In 1969 there had been very serious popular disturbances, and urban guerrilla movements were beginning to operate. In response, the military government established the state of siege and arrested hundreds of political opponents. Most of them were tortured. Many young lawyers joined the ranks of our colleagues that were taking up the defense of political prisoners. In the early 70's there were many of us working in these cases, and each new case was heavily publicized.

As soon as someone was detained, we would inquire about him or her at the local police stations, and if we failed to locate the prisoner immediately, we would file habeas corpus petitions, often waking up a judge in the middle of the night. The purpose of habeas corpus petitions was to establish the whereabouts of the prisoner, the reasons for the arrest and the authority responsible for the decision. The Ministry of Interior had 24 hours to respond to the judge's inquiry. There were many times when the police denied holding a prisoner when the judge made a telephone inquiry. In those cases, if we had information as to the whereabouts of the prisoner, we would ask the judge to make an unannounced inspection visit to the police facility, and if the prisoner was found, the police officers who had lied to the judge were criminally liable.

As part of the defense strategy, lawyers representing criminal defendants before the courts would make every effort to submit evidence of torture, both to exclude evidence obtained under duress, and to seek an independent prosecution of the crime of torture. We were generally successful in the former of these objectives, but the sad truth is that prosecutions for torture in Argentina were very rare. I strongly believe that this de facto immunity provided a strong incentive for the scandalous immunity proportions that torture reached in later years.

Of course, one of our more important weapons was publicity, and we made a point of working through the media to keep Argentine public opinion aware of these practices. We also tried to work collectively as lawyers and to engage the bar associations in our struggle. One national association of lawyers, the Asociacion Gremial de Abogados, became very well known in the early 70's for its work on these matters. The more this and other organizations became known, the more the security forces came to perceive them as "fronts" or "surface organizations" for the urban guerrillas. Though this was clearly not the case, many lawyers did contribute to that perception by employing highly politicized rhetoric.

The balance of our work those years was generally positive, in the sense that we were effective in putting some limits on torture and in saving many lives, as well as generally contributing to raise awareness in the Argentine people about these horrors. To a large extent, our work was effective because of the independence thatmost Argentine judges were willing to show when confronting the executive branch. But the partisanship of our work-we all saw our role as lawyers as part of our political identify-and our exclusive focus on domestic efforts, left us unprepared to respond to what would happen in the late 70's, when the military again took over the government.

In fact, lawyers had become a distinct target of political repression by 1974, when after the death of General Juan Peron, the extreme right wing elements of Peronism took over the government in conjunction with his widow and vice-president, Isabel Martinez de Peron. The offices of the Asociacion Gremial were bombed several times, as were many private offices of lawyers who represented political defend

ants. Several lawyers were murdered and hundreds more went into exile. By 1975, only a handful of lesser known, younger attorneys, including myself, were still trying to assist clients in a rapidly growing number of cases. By then, we were still using habeas corpus to curb torture and to locate prisoners, and we were doing our best to demonstrate that torture had taken place, but we had no capacity to seek the enforcement of criminal liabilities against torturers. We worked under difficult conditions, meeting the relatives of our clients in bars and public squares advising them on how to proceed without a lawyer. We visited prisons unannounced and for short visits, and we restricted our briefs to the courts to the minimum, in order to avoid too much publicity. My close friends of those years were less fortunate than me; most of them were arrested in late 1976, when the military government had instituted the practice of “disappearances”, and they have not been found since.

More than 90 lawyers are counted among the desaparecidos of Argentina, and more than a hundred were held at different times, without charges, for prolonged periods under the state of siege. The plight of Argentine lawyers is very accurately described in a report published in May of 1979 as a result of a mission to Buenos aires of the New York Bar.1 The result of this repression was that in the worst years of the so called "dirty war" unleashed by the military dictatorship, thousands of political prisoners and desaparecidos and their families simply had no access to any form of legal assistance.

Out of these ashes, however, grew a human rights movement that is today one of the most vigorous and sophisticated of Latin America. It started with very tentative and cautious steps, but by 1980 it consisted of eight distinct organizations, each with a different focus and strategy, but all of them working closely together. One of them, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) concentrates in the delivery of legal services and the careful documentation of human rights violations. In only a few years, it has established a reputation for accuracy in reporting and for effective legal assistance that has earned it great respect in Argentine political circles and in the international human rights movement.

The lawyers working as CELS Staff or as pro bono volunteers have revived the commitment and courage of their predecessors in the 1970's. But their work is enhanced by features that are a significant improvement over the limitations I mentioned earlier. In the first place, though each of these lawyers has a political point of view, their work for human rights is strictly nonpartisan and they are able to separate that work from their personal involvement in different parties. They also enjoy and cultivate strong links to the international human rights movement, which broadens their scope and gives them access to remedies of an international nature. They have also achieved a higher degree of organization than in the past, allowing them to obtain funding in Argentina and abroad and to maintain full-time staff and permanent facilities, while making more effective use of volunteer help.

The work of these human rights organizations was instrumental in the early 80's in eliminating torture and other violations under the military dictatorship. Toward the end of its rule, abuses were much less frequent due in large part to the effective work of these organizations in bringing them to the attention of the courts, of the media and of the public, including international public opinion.

The tight control of the military over judges and journalists and particularly the complete disruption of the independence of the judiciary, were the underlying factors in the breakdown of the rule of law that made habeas corpus totally ineffective after 1976. In the 1980's, that tight control began to crumble under the pressure of the efforts of the human rights organizations. Several judges, at their request began challenging executive decisions and investigating cases of human rights violations. After the Malvinas fiasco in 1982 the internal disarray in the Armed Forces accelerated, and the domestic organizations began focusing on what is now their central concern: the enforcement of criminal liability for the abuses of the past.

Argentine lawyers are now busy gathering information on those abuses and bringing it to the attention of a National Commission of Disappeared Persons, created by President Alfonsin in December and charged with producing an authoritative report on the many aspects of the policy and practice of "disappearances." Lawyers are also filing complaints before criminal courts against named defendants, generally well-known members of the military dictatorship, and requesting the courts to produce further investigations and the obtaining of more evidence. They also participate actively in the national debate that Argentina's new democracy is holding in Congress, in the courts and in public opinion about how best to deal with the abuses of the past.

'Report of the Mission of Lawyers to Argentina, April 1-7, 1979, reprinted from The Record, Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Vol. 34, October 1979, No. 7.