Foreign Abducters Held To Be Liable in the U.S.
LEAD: In a decision applauded by human rights activists, a Federal district judge here has ruled that officials of foreign governments can be sued in American courts for the abduction and presumed killing of political opponents.
In a decision applauded by human rights activists, a Federal district judge here has ruled that officials of foreign governments can be sued in American courts for the abduction and presumed killing of political opponents.
The judge, D. Lowell Jensen, ruled last month that these abductions are subject to the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, which gives foreigners the right to bring suit in American courts for violations of international human rights law committed in their own countries.
International human rights activists said that expanding the statute to include 'disappearances' would help assure that this country does not become a safe haven for the henchmen of fallen despots.
'They cannot make the U.S. a retirement home because they will have to answer for their actions,' said David Cole, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, which helped bring the case. A separate crime of torture was recognized by the Federal courts as actionable under the statute in 1980. 'Distinct Method of Terror'
'The international community sees it as crucial that causing disappearances be recognized as a distinct violation of law because it has become a distinct method of terror,' Mr. Cole said.  Judge Jensen's ruling came in a civil suit brought against Carlos Guillermo Suarez-Mason, a former Argentine general who was arrested in the United States in 1987 and deported to Argentina last May on a fugitive warrant charging him with murder.
Mr. Suarez-Mason, who was known by prisoners as 'el Senor de Vida y Muerte,' the Lord of Life and Death, commanded troops accused of kidnapping and torturing thousands of Argentine civilians, who then disappeared, in seven years of military rule beginning in 1976.
The case was brought by Alfredo Forti, who now lives in Washington. He charged that his mother disappeared after being illegally arrested.
Judge Jensen held that the civil violation of 'causing disappearances' was comprised of two elements: abduction by state officials or their agents and official refusal to acknowledge the abduction or to disclose the fate of the detainee.
Whether the same principle will be extended to former heads of state is a question that is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit here.
In a case brought against Ferdinand E. Marcos, the former Philippine president, the Federal District Court in Hawaii ruled that a foreign sovereign is immune from liability for crimes, including torture, that are commited as an 'act of state.' The case has been pending for over a year.
THE LAW