Is justice finally coming to Argentina?

Argentine Ruling Revives Cases of 'Dirty War' Victims

One of the words that I most strongly asociate with Argentina, where I lived for a year and a half, is "impunidad" - impunity. The worst criminlas just never seem to get punished. Hopefully that is changing - slowly.

For nearly 30 years, Mr. Poblete's relatives have been blocked in their efforts to bring his tormentors to justice. But last month, the Argentine Supreme Court, acting in response to a complaint brought on behalf of his family, declared two amnesty laws from the 1980's to be unconstitutional. Now the Poblete case, which has been detailed in testimony from fellow prisoners who survived, along with hundreds more like it, is to be revived.....

Though the amnesty itself has been overturned, the pardons granted later to more than 400 former senior officials of the military dictatorship still stand. President Néstor Kirchner has decided not to annul the pardons himself or to ask Congress to pass a law to that effect, but rather to let the issue make its way through the courts....

"The justice system is treating this as a common crime and saying that if there are no witnesses, there is no proof, and if you can't prove the crime, it doesn't exist," Ms. Gutiérrez complained. "They don't seem to realize that nobody was tortured or killed with a notary public present, that nobody saw what happened and that what they are demanding is impossible."