Victim of Argentina's horrific 'Dirty War' buried 24 years late

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) -- Twenty-four years after an Argentine "Dirty War" era death squad took both their lives, Jose Daniel Bronzel was finally buried on Sunday next to his wife in a humble Buenos Aires cemetery.

Bronzel, whose remains uncovered in a mass grave were identified by forensic experts, and his wife Susana Elena Pedrini were just two of the roughly 30,000 people who disappeared during Argentina's brutal 1976-83 military dictatorship and are presumed dead.

"In the midst of so much horror, it is a blessing to be able to bury Jose and Susana together," said a tearful Noemi Pedrini, Susana's sister, as a small crowd gathered around the flower-adorned tomb.

In June 1999, the same group of forensic experts identified the remnants of Susana Pedrini, who was carrying a two-month-old baby when she disappeared July 27, 1976.

Human rights abuses were rampant throughout Latin America in the 1970s and '80s as military regimes kidnapped, tortured and often killed suspected leftist guerrillas.

Many of those killed in Argentina were dumped out of airplanes into the River Plate on so-called "flights of death." Their bodies never were recovered.

"Here we are once more burying one of our 30,000 disappeared. Seeing this urn, looking at this little grave, when both of them were once so full of life ... makes one indignant," Tati Almeyda, a member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights organization, told Reuters.

In 1985, several members of the Argentine military junta were jailed for human rights violations but were freed five years later after being pardoned by then-President Carlos Menem. Many now face charges of kidnapping babies born in captivity, a crime not covered under the pardon.

Bronzel and his wife were imprisoned before their death in what is now a police headquarters building, just a few yards (metres) from Congress.

The couple died along with 28 others in a mass killing and their bones were tossed into an unmarked grave in a Buenos Aires suburb. It wasn't until the 1990s that forensic experts began the slow process of identifying the remains.

Only 13 of the 30 killed in the August 20, 1976, massacre have been identified. Among those still to be identified is Cecilia Podolsky, Bronzel's mother, also murdered in that incident.

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