The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today provided details about one of the Jewish prisoners in Argentina who had been identified in an interview last week with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. (See April 10 issue of the Daily News Bulletin.) At the same time, the ADL said its list of approximately 1000 Argentina Jews consists of both those who have disappeared and those whom the government acknowledges it is holding in prison. About 60 percent of those on the list have disappeared, the ADL said.
The Jewish defense agency said that Jaime Lokman the auto dealer who was arrested on the day of the coup, March 24, 1976, was held incommunicado for more than 2 1/2 years in the penitentiary of Cordoba province. He like other political prisoners in that province, was permitted to see his family only one day a year and no mail was permitted. At the end of 1978, he was transferred to Sierra Chica prison in the province of Buenos Aires, suffering from a heart ailment and in danger of becoming paralyzed.
Although no charges have been made against Lokman and both the United States and Israel have offered visas to him, the Argentine government, on March 31, ruled against a habeus corpus appeal filed by Lokman’s wife Judith, the ADL reported in rejecting the appeal, the government contended that although his alleged “links with terrorism” might not be judicial grounds for conviction, he was nevertheless considered to be “dangerous.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
