Orphan Wants Adoptive Parents Jailed

Orphan Wants Adoptive Parents Jailed

By DEBORA REY – 16 hours ago

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A 30-year-old woman on Tuesday urged a federal court to convict and sentence her adoptive parents to 25 years in prison, the maximum allowed on charges they hid her true identity as a child of dissidents who disappeared under Argentina's dictatorship.

Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan accused Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez Pinto of falsifying adoption documents and concealing her identity at the trial that opened in February.

Thousands of leftists and dissidents vanished after being abducted by security forces during Argentina's 1976-1983 military regime, and human rights groups say more than 200 of their children were taken and given to military or politically connected families to raise.

Sampallo is the first child born of political prisoners who went missing in the "Dirty War" to press such charges at trial against her adoptive parents — and against a former army captain, Enrique Berthier, who is a defendant in the same proceeding.

"The charges against them are very serious," said her lawyer, Tomas Ojea Quintana, speaking outside court Tuesday. "All deserve the maximum allowed by law — 25 years."

Sampallo said her decision to press charges against her adoptive parents was important "for all of society, and for the rest of the children in my condition."

Defense lawyers did not respond to calls seeking comment and the adoptive parents have not commented publicly on the case.

Sampallo learned in 2001 that she is the daughter of missing political prisoners Mirta Mable Barragan and Leonardo Ruben Sampallo.

Sampallo's mother was six months pregnant when she and her father were abducted on Dec. 6, 1977, said Sampallo's lawyer. He said Sampallo was born in February 1978, while her mother was being held at a clandestine torture center.

There have been at least three earlier trials involving suspected illegal adoptions dating to the dictatorship that resulted in convictions — but the plaintiffs were not the adopted children.