Document #1133756
IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Author)
What follows is an unofficial translation
of a letter prepared on 11 April 1994 by the Center for Legal and
Social Studies (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS)) in
Argentina and received by the DIRB. The original document in
Spanish is available upon request.
Adolfo Miguel Dunda or Donda had the rank
of corvette captain during the dictatorship. He was also known
under the aliases "Rubén Pellegrino," "Guillermo Ribes,"
"Liebstein" and "Solís." He also operated under the "noms de
guerre" of "Geronimo" and "Palito". He played an active role in the
ranks of the illegal repression. He was an operations officer in
the Task Group (Grupo de Tareas, GT) of the Mechanical School of
the Navy (Escuela Mec nica de la Armada, ESMA), in 1979; second or
deputy chief of intelligence in 1980; in 1981-82 he alternated as
head of intelligence with Captain Miguel Angel Benazzi Berisso. He
left to reside in Brazil in August 1983; in 1984 he was the naval
attaché in the embassy of Argentina in Brazil.
He personally tortured with an electric
prod a number of individuals (names are listed in the original
Spanish-language document).
He was involved in the abduction of the
diplomat Elena Holmberg, carried out in December 1978. Her body
later appeared in the waters of the Luj n river.
A brother of his, José María
Donda, a "montonero" militant, was abducted in May 1977 and remains
disappeared; his wifethe subject's sister-in-lawwas abducted and
gave birth in the ESMA [where she was being held].
Adolfo Miguel Dunda was subject to a
rigurous preventive detention for his responsibility in 18
violations of human rights; he regained freedom through the Due
Obedience law.
Adolfo Miguel Dunda is one of the 15 ESMA
officers included in the presentation that CELS made at the CIDH
(International or Interamerican Court of Human Rights) in September
1988, denouncing the Argentine state for having exonerated them
through the Due Obedience [law], thus violating the Interamerican
Human Rights Convention and the International and Interamerican
Positive and Consuetudinary Law in matters of human rights.
Adolfo Miguel Dunda is named in the
reserved report prepared by the National Commission on the
Disappeared (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición
de Personas, CONADEP) listing the names of repressors, handed to
the government of President Alfonsín around 1984.
For information on the Center for Legal
Studies (CELS) in Argentina, please refer to the attached excerpt
from Human Rights Directory: Latin America an the
Caribean.
This response was prepared after
researching publicly accessible information currently available to
the DIRB within time constraints. This response is not, and does
not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular
claim to refugee status or asylum.
Centro de Estudios Legales Y Sociales
(CELS), Buenos Ayres, Argentina. 11 April 1994. Letter sent to the
DIRB, Ottawa.
Human Rights Internet Reporter
[Cambridge]. Human Rights Directory: Latin America and the
Caribean. January 1990. Vol. 13, No. 2 and 3, pp. 120-21.