Missing Argentine Trial Witness Found

In this file picture taken May 5, 2005, Luis Angel Gerez talks to reporters at Buenos Aires Congress after testifying against former police officer Luis Abelardo Patti. Gerez, a key witness in the trial of the ex-officer charged with torture during Argentina's military dictatorship has gone missing in Escobar, some 50 kms (around 30 miles) north of Buenos Aires, Argentina, relatives said Thursday. It is the second time in three months that a witness has disappeared during a human rights case stemming from the 1976-1983 dictatorship. He was last seen leaving a friend's home Wednesday night. (AP Photo/Rolandro Andrade Stracuzzi, File) (Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi - AP)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- A key witness in a human rights trial stemming from Argentina's military dictatorship was found beaten Friday, two days after he went missing.

Luis Gerez, who has accused a former police chief of torturing him during the 1966-73 dictatorship, was found by a police patrol in a street of Garin, a town just north of Buenos Aires, said Leon Arslanian, the Buenos Aires security minister.

A friend who spoke to Gerez at a hospital, Alberto Fernandez de Rosa, said Gerez had been abducted by three men who had blindfolded, beat and burned him with cigarettes.

Gerez, 51, was the second witness in a human rights trial to vanish in three months. The other witness, whose testimony helped convict a former police chief in the disappearance of six people during the dictatorship, has not been seen since Sept. 19.

President Nestor Kirchner blamed both disappearances on former security agents seeking impunity for abuses committed during the dictatorship.

"Everything seems to indicate than in both cases there has been the work of ... former police and military agents who want to intimidate, pursuing their goal of maintaining impunity," Kirchner said in a televised address minutes before Gerez reappeared.

Gerez, a construction worker, disappeared Wednesday night in Escobar, a town just north of the capital. His relatives told Channel 7 television that he was taken to a hospital and was scared but in good condition. The relatives did not say why he had disappeared or if he had been abducted.

Nearly 13,000 people are officially listed as missing or killed the dictatorship's crackdown on dissent, a campaign known as the "dirty war." Human rights groups say the toll is closer to 30,000.