Justice is served?

From 1976 to 1983 Argentina was ruled by a military junta, which waged a dirty war against their own subjects. During that time tens of thousands of people were disappeared: arrested, tortured and killed. In 1986/87, several years after the fall of the junta in 1983 (partially caused by their ill fated attempt to conquer the Falklands Islands) two laws were passed giving immunity to those responsible for the Dirty War and those who participated in it. Not only did these get immunity in Argentine courts, but also from extradition requests from foreign governments.

Fortunately, this does not mean that these torturers and murderers can walk the streets freely, as this Washington Post article shows:

Women have spit on him. Men have chased him with crowbars. While he was waiting for a bus a few years ago in the Patagonian city of Bariloche, Argentine media described in a well-known case, a man walked calmly up to him and in a conversational tone asked:

“Are you Astiz?”

“Yes I am,” Astiz answered.

The man punched him twice in his face and kicked him in his groin before Astiz ran away. Every year since, on the anniversary of the assault, the townspeople hold a block party in the exact spot where the punches were thrown, to celebrate humiliation of Astiz.

I’m not one to argues in favour of mob violence, but here you have not a situation where people take the law into their own hands even though there is a functioning justice system present, but because these people are unpunishable by it, are above the law. In such a situation I find taking the law into your own hands to be commendable. These people need to be punished one way or another, not to escape scott free.

(Meanwhile, the Dutch crown prince saw nothing wrong with marrying the daughter of one of Argentine’s leaders during the dirty war. But hey, it’s alright, he said he hadn’t know what happened then and he wasn’t invited to the wedding anway, the poor guy.)