'The Dirty War'.(Argentina's President Nestor Kirchner's initiatives paves way for prosecution of war criminals)

His fellow officers called him the Piranha, and Juan Antonio Azic's interrogation techniques lived up to that nickname. When a young Peronist activist named Carlos Lordkipanidse and his family were hauled into the Argentine navy's notorious Mechanical School in 1978, Azic grabbed the prisoner's infant son by the feet and threatened to smash the baby's head against the wall. When that ploy failed, Azic placed the child on Lordkipanidse's chest so he could share his father's agony when the electric-shock torture began. But unlike a number of generals and admirals who would subsequently stand trial for human-rights atrocities committed during seven years of military rule in Argentina, the Piranha and other middle-ranking officers walked free under two amnesty laws. That impunity suddenly ended two months ago when a Buenos Aires judge issued arrest warrants for Azic and 44 other ex-officers wanted on murder charges in Spain. That same evening Azic sat down on a park bench, stuck a 9mm pistol in his mouth and squeezed the trigger. The bullet missed his brain but left him in critical condition, the roof of his mouth shattered and the left side of his nose blown off.

The reopening of Argentina's dirty-war wounds is no accident. Over the past 20 years a succession of civilian presidents tried to close that bloody chapter in the country's history to no avail. Argentina's recently elected President Nestor Kirchner is trying a radically different tack: during his first 100 days in office, Kirchner dismantled the body of laws and presidential decrees that have shielded the armed forces from further criminal prosecution, and his bold initiatives are already producing results. A federal prosecutor issued 38 new warrants for the arrest of retired military officers in Buenos Aires last week, and the judicial offensive is fanning demands for justice in neighboring Chile, where nearly 3,200 people died or vanished during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 17-year reign of terror. As a series of solemn ceremonies marks the 30th anniversary of Pinochet's bloody coup later this week, President Ricardo Lagos is under fire for his cautious approach on human-rights issues. "The executive [branch] and Congress [in Argentina] have sent a clear message," says Argentine human-rights campaigner Victor Abramovich. "Decide on the basis of the Constitution but don't worry about the political impact--because we can handle that."

It wasn't always that way. In the late 1980s millions of Argentines fell prey to a collective amnesia about the military's brutal repression that killed or disappeared as many as 30,000 people. But two thirds of all Argentines now favor the resumption of human-rights trials, and Kirchner is spearheading the backlash. His politics are firmly rooted in the Peronist left: when a junta led by Army Gen. Jorge Videla overthrew President Isabel Peron in March 1976, Kirchner was a law student who was briefly detained because he belonged to the radical Peronist Youth movement. As a three-term governor of Santa Cruz province, Kirchner wasn't known as a human-rights crusader, but as president he has embraced the cause of the military's victims with gusto. Two months after taking office, he scrapped a decree prohibiting the extradition of military officials to foreign countries. Buoyed by sky-high approval ratings, Kirchner later prevailed on the Peronist-led Congress ...