Jaime Lokman, an Argentine businessman who was imprisoned for more than 31/2 years for allegedly aiding anti-government subversives — although no formal charges were ever brought against him — is safe in Israel after receiving authority to leave Argentina.
Lokman, with his wife and daughter, reached Israel Saturday. In a telephone call yesterday to New York, he informed Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, director of the Latin American Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, of his arrival. The ADL had been actively seeking his release for years.
The Argentine Ambassador. to the U.S., Jorge A. Ajo Espil, stated in letters to Rosenthal and to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Washington, that he is “aware of your interest in Mr. Jaime Lokman’s case” and “I want to inform you” that the Argentine government, in a decree of November 9 “has granted Mr. Lokman the right of option to leave the country, allowing him to travel to Israel.”
Lokman was imprisoned on March 24, 1976, the day of the coup by the military junta. According to Rosenthat, he was first detained in prison in Cordoba, later incarcerated in the Sierra Chica Prison in Buenos Aires Province and more recently in Rawson’s U-6 Penitentiary where political prisoners are confined. Rosenthal said that Lokman, 56, was in failing health while he was in prison.
ADL PROTESTED HIS PROLONGED DETENTION
The ADL repeatedly protested his prolonged detention without charges and the government’s refusal to permit him his right under the Argentine Constitution to leave the country. Rosenthal observed that Argentine low permits persons detained without charges to request the option to emigrate.
Last August, an official of the Argentine Embassy in Washington said Lokman was detained for “political indoctrination of youth for the ‘Monteros’ terrorist group and acting as financial agent for the terrorist group ‘Commandosrevolucionarios’ through use of a checking account in the First City National Bank in the city of Parana.”
The Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language daily, reported Sept. 18 that no such bank exists in Parana and described the explanation by the Embassy official as “questionable,” Rosenthal noted.
Rosenthal said the Herald reported that Lokman’s lawyer said that “his client had never been charged with any offense but that it was being said he was being held for contacts with subversions, allegations which are strenuously denied by Lokman and his family.”
Rosenthal said “In freeing Lokman, the national executive power of Argentina has acknowledged a serious injustice. His release leads to the hope that a more favorable trend is beginning for the many political prisoners whose freedom the ADL is seeking. Since three detainees have been released in the past two months, we hope the Argentine government will expedite the release of many more prisoners prior to the Christmas and New Year season.”
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