The Black Vault - Ex-Argentine General Menendez Detaines

By OSCAR SERRAT - BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A retired general under Argentina's former dictatorship has been detained amid an investigation of alleged human rights abuses during military rule, authorities said Tuesday.

Retired Gen. Luciano Benjamin Menendez, former chief of the 3rd Army Group, was picked up in the central Argentine city of Cordoba, a federal court official said.

Four other officers and a civilian intelligence agent under the 1976-83 dictatorship also were being sought in the investigation, authorities said.

A leading Cordoba newspaper, La Voz del Interior, reported Tuesday that the former officers are wanted in the case of four people who prosecutors say where illegally detained, tortured and then reported to have died in a December 1977 clash with leftist rebels.

In Cordoba, prosecutors claim to have collected accounts from survivors of a clandestine torture center who reported seeing the four alive there before they were reported killed in fighting. Families of the victims have been pressing for prosecutions.

The era of military rule has come under renewed scrutiny since Argentina's Congress repealed a pair of 1980s amnesty laws that had blocked prosecution of atrocities dating to the so-called "Dirty War."

Some 9,000 people are officially listed as missing or dead from that era, while human rights groups say as many as 30,000 died in a crackdown on political dissent.

It was the second time in recent months that Menendez has been taken into custody. In July, he and 44 other former officers were detained, then released as part of a separate investigation into military-era abuses.

At the time, the former officers were wanted by a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, in his investigation of accusations of torture and genocide against Spanish nationals. Spain's government later rejected the extradition and the former officers were released on Sept. 1.

The Argentine legislature in August repealed two major amnesty laws that had blocked any prosecution of dictatorship-era human rights abuses.

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