Argentina military doctor extradited from Paraguay

Argentina military doctor extradited from Paraguay
MICHAEL WARREN Associated Press
Published: July 15, 2011

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A former military doctor was extradited from Paraguay on Friday to face charges that include stealing babies from political prisoners during Argentina's dictatorship.

Prosecutors say the mothers were killed and the newborns were often given to military families to raise.

~snip~
But other doctors, nurses and a very few survivors testified that Bianco took pregnant detainees to the ward from other torture centers in his Ford Falcon, and later helped organize the childbirths and disappearances, said Alan Iud, a lawyer for the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which has sought for decades to find the children.

In court documents, witnesses accused Bianco of escorting pregnant detainees into the tightly guarded epidemiology section, where they gave birth while handcuffed and blindfolded. Both the women and the newborns then disappeared. None of the so-called "subversives" or their babies were ever registered in the hospital, nurses testified.

More:
http://newsok.com/argentina-military-doctor-extradited-from-paraguay/article/feed/276658?custom_click=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Newsok%2FNews+%28NewsOK.com+RSS+-+news%29

http://www.desaparecidos.org.nyud.net:8090/arg/tort/gallery.gif
Mayor Norberto Atilio Bianco
Argentine Navy
Physician

Norberto Bianco is a physician and specialist in traumatology. During the military dictatorship, Bianco was an army doctor at the Campo de Mayo Military Hospital. The Hospital was home to a clandestine maternity ward, where pregnant "disappeared" women, held at the Campo de Mayo concentration camp as well as other similar camps, where taken to give birth. According to the testimony of numerous physicians and nurses, Bianco had a key role in the transfer and attention to the disappeared women taken to the Hospital. The disappeared women were tied to their beds, and kept blindfolded during their whole stay there, including the births.

Norberto Bianco has two adopted children, Carolina and Pablo. The children are likely to be those of disappeared (and later killed) women who gave birth at the Campo de Mayor Hospital. Bianco and his wife admit that the children are not theirs, but they deny that their real mothers were disappeared.

In the 1980's, Bianco and his family had fled to Paraguay to avoid DNA tests being conducted on their children. The Paraguayan courts acted slowly, and the children were able to get married as teenagers to stop the courts from ordering DNA tests. They do not want to acknowledge the possibility that their real parents might be disappeared.

Bianco and his wife were finally extradited in 1997, and put in prison on charges of kidnapping and forgery of official documents. They were later released by the Appellate Court which ruled that the whole time Bianco was in Paraguay he was deprived of his freedom, and thus he had already served his sentence. This, despite the evidence that while in Paraguay Bianco was able to move freely.

More:
http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/tort/medicos/bianco/eng.html