Police in Argentina have arrested a group of retired naval officers in connection with the alleged kidnapping of hundreds of children during the late 1970s and early eighties. The arrest of six low-ranking officers was ordered by a judge investigating claims by human rights groups that the military dictatorship was engaged in the systematic abduction of babies born to political prisoners at the Mar del Plata, some 400 kilometres south of Buenos Aires, where the navy ran a secret detention centre. Some of the officers are accused of illegally adopting one or more the babies.
According to witness accounts, young imprisoned women were often blindfolded while giving birth, and their children were immediately take away from them. The parents were then allegedly drugged and dumped from planes into the Atlantic off Argentina's coast.
The operation marks the first time a group of former members of the armed forces has been arrested on charges of this nature. Nine officials from the former military government have already been charged with involvement in child kidnapping. The government held power from 1976 to 1983. when up to 30,000 people were murdered or "disappeared". The investigation was triggered by materials collected by the humanitarian organisation Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
