Summary

NAME: ARG DIRTY WAR 20080221I TAPE: EF08/0208 IN_TIME: 11:13:35:09 DURATION: 00:00:41:20 SOURCES: AP TELEVISION DATELINE: Buenos Aires, Feb 21 2008 RESTRICTIONS: SHOTLIST 1. Various exteriors of court building 2. Various of Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan outside court 3. Barragan walking back into court building STORYLINE: The case of a 30-year-old woman who is suing her adoptive parents for kidnapping, and who has become the first child of disappeared political prisoners to press such charges, continued on Thursday. The case opened in an Argentine court on Tuesday. Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragan accused her adoptive parents Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez Pinto of falsifying adoption documents to hide her identity. Thousands of leftists and dissidents vanished after being abducted by security forces during Argentina's 1976-1983 military regime, and human rights groups say more than 200 their children were taken and given to military or politically connected families to raise. Sampallo, who in 2001 learned that she is the daughter of missing political prisoners Mirta Mable Barragan and Leonardo Ruben Sampallo, is one of 88 young people who determined their identity with DNA tests coordinated by the human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Sampallo's mother was six months pregnant when she and her father were abducted on December 6, 1977, according to Sampallo's lawyer. He said Sampallo was born in February 1978, while her mother was being held at a clandestine torture centre. The case marks the first time a woman has taken her adoptive parents to court in Argentina. There have been at least three earlier trials involving suspected illegal adoptions dating to the dictatorship that resulted in convictions, but the plaintiffs were not the adopted children.