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Argentine journalists testify about persecution of colleagues during Dirty War

By Maira Magro

In a new round of trials for crimes committed during Argentina's military dictatorship (1976-1983), the editor of Clarín newspaper, Ricardo Kirschbaum, and journalist Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú testified about the disappearance of 22 people at a clandestine detention center in the northern city of Tucumán in 1976 and 1977, Clarín reports. Among those who disappeared were journalist Eduardo Ramos and his pregnant wife.

The suspects who are being tried in a federal court in Tucumán include former Army generals Antonio Domingo Bussi and Luciano Benjamín Menéndez (both already sentenced to life in prison for other crimes that occurred during the dictatorship), and five other people.

Kirschbaum of Clarín says his family suffered five attacks during the military regime. The first, he says, took place the night after the local newspaper La Gaceta received a list of journalists threatened with death, which included his name. Ruiz Guiñazú testified in her role as a journalist who was also a member of the national commission that prepared the "Nunca Mas" (Never Again) report on disappeared persons in Argentina.

Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.

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