Has this man joined ‘the disappeared’?

The ghosts of Argentina's "dirty war" are on the march again. A court witness, whose harrowing testimony recently sent a notorious torturer to jail for life, has disappeared. Jorge Julio Lopez, a 77-year-old retired construction worker, was last seen at his home in the city of La Plata about two weeks ago, on the eve of sentence being passed on Miguel Etchecolatz.
A former police commissioner, Etchecolatz was convicted for crimes committed during the ruthless counter-insurgency campaign by Argentine security forces against armed left-wing groups between 1976-83, in which as many as 30,000 people died or vanished.

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The Lopez family's suspicion that he was abducted to intimidate other torture victims from coming forward as witnesses in future court cases is widely shared by ordinary Argentines.

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Among them is Estela de Carlotto, head of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo group who search for children kidnapped during the repression - many of whom were secretly adopted by military families - in the hope of returning them to their biological families. Characteristically defiant, she told The First Post that whatever happens to Lopez, "we will not allow it to paralyse the search for truth and justice".

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