40 Years of Argentine Democracy, 30 Years of the Wiesenthal Center`s Latin American Office and 25 Years of the Extradition of Dinko Sakic

November 15, 2023

Buenos Aires - The Argentine Ministry of Education and the Wiesenthal Center organized the conference on “Justice processes and extraditions against those responsible for the Holocaust and crimes against humanity.”

The framework of three anniversaries was the reason: the 40 years of democracy in Argentina, the 30 years of the Latin American office of the Wiesenthal Center and the 25 years since the extradition of the last criminal from Argentina, the Ustasha Dinko Sakic.

Moderated by Cristina Gomez Giusto, Director of Human Rights of the Rectorate of the University of Buenos Aires, the historian Emmanuel Kahan spoke first, referring to the memory of the Holocaust in Argentina and the consolidation of democracy.

Lawyer Valeria Thus spoke about the intimate relationship between the judicial processes against the criminals of the Argentine dictatorship and the fight for human rights, and the necessary battle that must be waged against denialist speeches.

After screening images from Telenoche Investiga (Journalist TV Show) from 1998 that illustrated Dinko Sakic and his actions in the Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia, where nearly half a million people died, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Communists, Dr. Ariel Gelblung, Wiesenthal Center’s Director for Latin America, maintained that “extraditions are dialogues between political systems. They generally give good results when the systems that dialogue are consolidated democracies. Hence, Argentina extradited Josef Schwammberger, Erich Priebke and Dinko Sakic to Germany, Italy and Croatia respectively. Eichmann was captured on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, generating a conflict that was later overcome between Israel and Argentina because at that time the fragile South American democracy indicated that it would not extradite the criminal. And even more so, the case for the attack on the Jewish mutual AMIA in Buenos Aires still cannot be resolved because the regime of the ayatollahs in Iran will never extradite the fugitives requested by the Argentine justice system.”

For further information, please contact Dr. Ariel Gelblung at +54 9 11 49695365, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to your Twitter feed.