Death jolts Argentine baby trial

By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News, Buenos Aires

Some 200 babies including this infant were seized under the junta

A key witness in a trial in Argentina about the fate of babies stolen from political prisoners during the "Dirty War" has been found dead.

Police are investigating whether the former army officer, Lt Col Paul Navone, killed himself.

Human rights investigators believe he may have been murdered to prevent him revealing details of a traumatic case that has shocked the country.

His body was found in a park near his home in the central city of Cordoba.

There was a single bullet wound to his head and a handgun was found nearby.

He had been due to testify about what happened to twins born to a political dissident, Raquel Negro, during military rule in Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

Reunited

Campaigners estimate that 200 babies were taken from their parents and given up for adoption to childless couples working for, or sympathetic to, the military government.

The birth parents then disappeared - probably among the estimated 30,000 people killed during the Dirty War.

Eighty-eight of those stolen children - now in their late twenties and early thirties - have been identified.

They were tracked down by grandparents who formed a human rights organisation, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

They have urged the Argentine authorities to fully investigate the death of Col Navone, saying he would not be the first witness to human rights abuses to be killed, or to disappear in mysterious circumstances.