'Dirty War' witness freed after being captured

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- A human rights activist whose disappearance prompted an intense government manhunt in Argentina said Thursday he was released by his captors after being tied up and beaten.

"They hit me. It was a punch without warning," said Juan Evaristo Puthod, a survivor of clandestine prisons where thousands of political dissidents were tortured and killed during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship.

"It brought back all my memory, of a moment that was very difficult for me, for the whole world. My only fear was that they would kill me," Puthod told Radio 10 as he went from a hospital to a government office to file a police report about being seized.

Puthod, who lost vision in one eye while being tortured years ago, has been an important witness in several human rights cases as Argentina's government tries to hold former police and military figures accountable for their roles in the "Dirty War."

But in his initial statements, Puthod offered no details that might suggest a link between the two gunmen who kidnapped him Tuesday and people who could be affected by his testimony. He was freed just before midnight Wednesday, according to the government's Telam news agency.

Puthod, 49, was treated and released from a clinic in the town of Zarate, where he runs an organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the thousands of people who were killed or vanished during the dictatorship.

His disappearance prompted President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to mobilize an intense response, and hundreds of police officers flooded the area searching for him.

Puthod's disappearance aroused alarm partly because other witnesses have gone missing or died since Argentina renewed its effort to prosecute Dirty War crimes.

Construction worker Jorge Julio Lopez hasn't been seen since September 2006, shortly after his testimony helped convict a former Buenos Aires provincial police chief of dirty war crimes.

Retired army officer Paul Alberto Navone died in an apparent suicide in February after he was called to testify about the fate of twins born to a political prisoner. And in December, former Coast Guard officer Hector Febres was found dead of cyanide poisoning in his military cell, just before a court was to rule on charges he kidnapped and tortured dissidents.

"This investigation must continue. We have to know who is responsible, because if not we can't even go out in the street," Puthod's wife, Graciela Lencina, told Telam. E-mail to a friend

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