A 25 year-old Argentine Jew for whom the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith repeatedly interceded with Argentinian authorities has been released from an Argentine prison after being detained more than five years without charge.
Alberto Schprejer is now in Israel, one of five countries which offered to accept him, Rabbi Morton M. Rosenthal, director of the League’s Latin American Affairs Department, said. Rabbi Rosenthal said that Schprejer’s cousin, Marina Kaplan of New Orleans, phoned ADL on June 16 to say he had just arrived in Israel and expressed “appreciation” to the ADL for “never giving up.”
Schprejer is one of 1,200 Argentine citizens, both Christian and Jewish, who are prisoners or who have disappeared there, for whom the ADL has interceded as part of its Argentine Prisoner Project.
The rabbi said Schprejer, who was never given a trial or a reason for his arrest in January, 1976, while a high school student, was shunted among five prisons, the last one the Rawson maximum security detention center in the south of Argentina. During his confinement, Schprejer tried unsuccessfully on four occasions to obtain permission to leave Argentina, a constitutional right for Argentine prisoners held without charges.
In April, he was finally granted the option to leave Argentina, but was not released from prison because officials claimed they had lost his papers, Rabbi Rosenthal said. Schprejer had long before been granted visas by the United States, France, Britain and Sweden, as well as Israel.
Many individuals have participated in ADL’s Argentine Prisoner Project through the ADL’s 27 regional offices. The project originated in 1977 in response to
mounting requests from relatives and friends of those who were either detained or disappeared in Argentina.
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