Adoptees in Argentine DNA fight defend right to not know where they come from

[Judi Lynn]

Adoptees in Argentine DNA fight defend right to not know where they come from

http://snsimages.tribune.com.nyud.net:8090/media/photo/2010-06/54102662.jpg

Marcela Noble, right, and her brother Felipe Noble, pose for pictures after an interview
with The Associated Press in Buenos Aires, Thursday, June 3, 2010. The adopted children
of Ernestina Herrera de Noble, the owner of Grupo Clarin, one of Latin America's largest
media companies, discussed their identities and their fears about what may happen next as
their DNA is compared with samples left by relatives of political dissidents who were
killed after giving birth in captivity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
(AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) (Natacha Pisarenko, AP / June 3, 2010)

MICHAEL WARREN
Associated Press Writer
2:55 a.m. EDT, June 4, 2010

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The adopted children of Argentina's leading newspaper publisher defended their right not to know who their biological parents are, even as they prepared themselves for the possibility that DNA evidence will show they were taken as babies from victims of the dictatorship.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera accused Argentine human rights groups and authorities of violating their privacy by forcing them to give DNA samples in a politically charged case that could put their elderly adoptive mother behind bars.

The Nobles are at the center of a nine-year legal battle over allegations that Grupo Clarin owner Ernestina Herrera de Noble illegally adopted them 34 years ago with help from officials of the military junta. Hundreds of political dissidents were kidnapped and killed after giving birth in clandestine torture centers during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, and human rights groups believe the Noble children's birth mothers were among them.

Barring a last-minute Supreme Court ruling, the National Genetics Bank's scientists will begin extracting DNA on Monday from underwear and other clothing the Nobles surrendered last week under a court order, following what they described as a dangerous car chase from the judge's office to their mother's mansion.

More:
http://www.courant.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-lt-argentina-dirty-war-children,0,7272623.story

LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4411861

[Judi Lynn]

1. Argentina Baby Snatch Witness Dies in Trial

This event ocurred in 2008, posting to illustrate background on these trials:

Argentina Baby Snatch Witness Dies in Trial
Possibly killed before could talk about Dirty War disappearances
By Rob Quinn| Posted Feb 27, 08 9:46 AM CST

(Newser) – Days before he was to testify about the Dirty War disappearance of twins born to a political prisoner, a former Argentine army officer has been found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, the BBC reports. Police don't know if Paul Navone committed suicide but human rights groups think he might have been murdered to stop him from talking.

"It's highly likely that there are people who could have felt threatened by Navone's testimony," said a lawyer. Hundreds of babies were stolen from their dissident parents and given to childless couples sympathetic to Argentina's military junta from 1976 to 1983, when an estimated 30,000 leftists disappeared. Another army officer died of cyanide poisoning in December days before the verdict in his torture case.

http://www.newser.com/story/20179/argentina-baby-snatch-witness-dies-in-trial.html

~~~~~
3 convicted of switching child's identity in landmark Argentine 'dirty war' trial
JEANNETTE NEUMANN, Associated Press Writer

April 4, 2008 6:32 PM

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - A court on Friday sentenced the adoptive parents of a baby born to a missing political prisoner to up to eight years in prison for concealing the child's identity, in a landmark case with roots in Argentina's dictatorship.

The court also handed down a sentence of 10 years to a former army captain accused of giving the couple the baby after the real parents were abducted by state security forces during the 1976-1983 military regime and never reappeared.

The case marked the first time a child of a dissident who disappeared during Argentina's ''dirty war'' had taken her adoptive parents to court. Human rights groups say more than 200 such children were taken from abducted mothers and given to military or politically connected families to raise. DNA tests have allowed some of them to identify their real parents.

~snip~
Berthier's lawyer, Alejandro Maria Macedo Rumi, said during the trial there was no proof that Sampallo's parents were missing or disappeared. He added that the evidence against Berthier was given by ''former terrorists'' who had participated in leftist militant groups.

~snip~
In 2001, Sampallo's mother was six months pregnant when she and her father were abducted on Dec. 6, 1977, said Sampallo's lawyer. He said Sampallo was born in February 1978, while her mother was being held at a clandestine torture center.

More:
http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=565274892501909659

http://www.theargentimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/edition036/abuelas/abuelas03.jpg

http://www.theage.com.au.nyud.net:8090/ffximage/2008/02/20/majmaria_narrowweb__300x384,0.jpg http://images.usatoday.com.nyud.net:8090/Wires2Web/20080404/3909162987_Argentina_Hija_Desaparecidosx.jpg

Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan

~~~~~
From The Times
November 28, 2007

The orphan files
What happens when you find out that the people you thought were your family helped to kill your real parents? In Buenos Aires, the orphans of the disappeared tell their stories

Thomas Catan

http://www.timesonline.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/multimedia/archive/00247/victoria185_247005a.jpg

For 27 years Victoria Donda believed that her name was AnalÍa, that she was born on a patch of wasteland in Buenos Aires and brought up by two loving parents. Three years ago she was told the awful truth: she was born in a secret torture centre run by the brutal junta that governed Argentina for seven years, she was ripped from her mother’s arms when she was 15 days old, and – most heartbreaking of all – the people she thought were her family were part of a regime responsible for the political abduction and murder of her real parents.

The truth was hard to take. “It was very hard, really horrible,” Victoria says. “Imagine if someone told you right now that your parents are not your parents.” She has a complex relationship with the couple who brought her up, a naval officer and his wife, whom she now calls her “appropriators”. The woman came from a poor background and was illiterate: “I taught her to read. She thought she was doing the right thing.” But she finds it difficult to talk about her “father” and refuses to mention his name. Juan Anto-nio Azic shot himself in the head in 2003 as he was about to be charged with child abduction and torturing prisoners. He survived, emerged from a coma and is now in a secure psychiatric unit awaiting trial.

“I’m his daughter: society can’t ask me to judge him,” Victoria says. “They raised me with love, and I love him still. He was responsible and he is in prison and I go to see him. He knows I think he needs to be under arrest. But I think love is not tied to whether you were responsible politically or not. Love works in a different way. If your child ends up being a serial killer, you don’t stop loving him. He will be imprisoned but you will keep on loving him. It’s the same thing.”

Victoria’s case is tragic, but it is far from unique. Between 1976 and 1983, human rights organisations estimate that between 10,000 and 30,000 people disappeared during the Dirty War, the junta’s attempt to “cleanse” Argentina of left-wing opponents. They won’t be coming back: witnesses from that time tell how prisoners were injected with paralysing drugs, stripped naked, crammed on to planes and dropped into the Rio de la Plata, so wide that you cannot see from one shore to the other. But what of their children – either abducted with their parents, or, like Victoria, born in one of those hell-hole detention centres?

More:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2955564.ece

[Judi Lynn]

2. Photos of the adopted children, and Clarin owner Ernestina Herrera de Noble:

(Very rough google translation, the last sentence says, I think, "the entire country paid for this aberrant alliance".)
Google: Jorge Rafael Videla and Ernestina Herrera de Noble provided at the opening of the company "Newsprint." The military sponsored the formation of monopoly to "Clarin" street repression and silence on the missing. Payment across the country this alliance aberrant.

http://www.periodicotribuna.com.ar.nyud.net:8090/old/images/fotos/serieenestina.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

3. Argentina tries to uncover 'dirty war' orphans

Argentina tries to uncover 'dirty war' orphans
Efforts to locate about 400 children unaccounted for after their parents were disappeared by the military junta take a new turn as police forcibly take DNA samples from two siblings.

By Andres D’Alessandro and Chris Kraul, Special to the Los Angeles Times
June 9, 2010 | 7:49 p.m.

Reporting from Buenos Aires and Bogota, Colombia — They were adopted by a wealthy media family at the height of Argentina's so-called dirty war. Now the two 34-year-olds find themselves, much against their will, at the center of a national obsession as their country awaits the results of court-ordered DNA tests.

The question: Are they among the 400 children of victims of the military dictatorship who still remain unaccounted for?

The intense emotions surrounding the case show that Argentina is still struggling to recover from the trauma of the internal conflict from 1976 to 1983, when 10,000 to 30,000 people disappeared and are presumed to have been killed by the military junta. Newborns and infants of slain prisoners were commonly put up for adoption.

The current drama centers on Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera, the adopted children of Ernestina Herrera de Noble, owner of the Clarin media conglomerate. The process of matching DNA samples taken from the siblings' clothing and toiletries with samples taken from dirty-war victims in the National Genetic Data Bank began Monday. Results are expected within a month.

Advocates for victims of the junta, including the Grandmothers of the Plaza of May, have contended that all adoptive children from the era should be tested and their records be stored in the data bank so that families can be reunited or attain closure on the decades-old disappearances.

The Grandmothers, who get their name from the Buenos Aires plaza where they protested over the missing children of their slain sons and daughters, estimate that 400 of the 500 offspring still have not been found.

But Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera have said they do not want to find out who are their biological parents, and did not give blood samples to a court-approved lab. Acting under a law passed last year requiring submission of genetic samples in dirty-war cases, police last month raided their family home to seize underwear and toothbrushes from which DNA samples were taken.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-argentina-heirs-20100609,0,2101883.story