IT’S THE stuff of novels: a former asylum-seeker, who came to Holland as a child, has launched a legal action for complicity in the death of her father against a leading figure in the junta that ruled Argentina in the Seventies. Her target is Jorge Horacio Zorreguieta, father of Princess Maxima, wife of the heir to the Dutch throne, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander.
It’s a saga that the Dutch monarch, Queen Beatrix, had hoped would go away. Because of Zorreguieta’s background, he was banned from attending the royal couple’s glamorous wedding in 2002. Since then he has been here many times, including for the christening of his granddaughters, princesses Amalia, Alexia and Ariane.
But this extraordinary story has not gone away. In fact, the old sore was reopened again recently when the opposition Labour Party – at a record low in the polls – finally decided it was opposed to Zorreguieta being allowed to attend Willem-Alexander’s investiture when Queen Beatrix steps down.
The proceedings against Zorreguieta are being taken by Alejandra Slutzky, who arrived in the Netherlands in 1978 after spending eight months in hiding with her mother and brother. Since then she has become a Dutch citizen, joined the Socialist Party and written a bestselling novel, Silence, telling her family’s story.
It’s a remarkable tale, made all the more remarkable by the fact that more than two decades after Slutzky took refuge here, the daughter of a man who had been part of the regime that allegedly killed her father, Samuel Slutzky, coincidentally followed her here in some style to marry the heir-apparent.
As a result, Slutzky made a first attempt in 2001 to persuade the public prosecutor’s office to instigate proceedings against Zorreguieta, now 83. That attempt failed because the prosecutor said the case did not fall under Dutch jurisdiction.
However, that law has since changed, allowing any Dutch citizen to make a complaint to the prosecutor’s office which, if it is judged to have a basis in law, can result in a non-Dutch citizen being charged in the Netherlands with crimes committed elsewhere.
The other change is that Slutzky is now represented by campaigning lawyer, Liesbeth Zegveld, professor of international humanitarian law at Leiden Law School. She recently forced the State to pay compensation to relatives of those who died in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 because they were not protected by Dutch UN peacekeepers. She says charges against Zorreguieta are now possible and should go ahead.
According to Amnesty International, the military junta led by Gen Jorge Videla that overthrew Argentinian president Isabel Peron in a coup d’état in 1976 was responsible for more than 30,000 deaths during what became known as the Dirty War.
Samuel Slutzky was one of “the disappeared”, arrested in 1971 and never heard of again. As agriculture and livestock minister, an important economic portfolio, Jorge Zorreguieta was a member of the junta but says he knew nothing about the disappearances, or about Samuel Slutzky.
That, however, is not the opinion of distinguished historian Michiel Baud, professor of Latin American studies at the University of Amsterdam, who was commissioned by the Dutch parliament before the marriage of Maxima and Willem-Alexander to look into the background of the father of the bride.
Baud concluded that while Zorreguieta was most likely not involved in any way in the disappearances himself, it would have been “unlikely” for a person in such a powerful position in such an authoritarian government not to have known exactly what was going on.
That damning conclusion prompted one Dutch newspaper to hoist a photograph of Zorreguieta beside a scathing headline with the German phrase, " Ich habe es nicht gewusst" ("I knew nothing"), a phrase associated in the Netherlands with Nazi sympathisers and their denial of the concentration camps.
Parliament here has a traditional right to approve the marriage of an heir to the throne, a right which had never been more than a slightly embarrassing rubber-stamping exercise. In 2001, that changed. But both houses finally agreed that Maxima could not be held responsible for her father’s dubious past and they gave the marriage the go-ahead.
Baud too has now re-entered the fray, saying he personally believed Zorreguieta should not be allowed to attend Willem-Alexander’s investiture because he still – 40 years later – showed not the slightest inclination to distance himself from the Videla regime.
So the pressure continues. If the public prosecutor’s office can now be convinced by Alejandra Slutzky that Jorge Horacio Zorreguieta has a case to answer – then Zorreguieta himself must decide whether or not it is safe to visit the Netherlands and risk the ignominy of being detained and possibly charged.
That is a tough decision to make about a country where your daughter will one day be queen.