Weekly Report - 9 December 2003

A long-awaited facedown between the judiciary and the military has been triggered by a judge's decision to summon army officers and soldiers to testify on the fate of a teacher presumed to have been secretly buried on army premises. The military have refused to obey, invoking the 1986 law (ratified by referendum) that shields them from prosecution for crimes committed while in power. The judge, Alejandro Recarey, invokes instead the primacy of information: that same legislation placed upon the government the burden of investigating the fate of the `disappeared' — a stipulation successive governments have failed to honour fully.