Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Violent Nutters...

Argentina has long suffered the not-incorrect image of a haven for Nazi war criminals post-WWII. But I've thought that era was past, as was the era when soldiers working for the dictatorship threw "subversives" from planes at altitude. But several recent events made me rethink my optimistic denial of the old stereotype. Three events, actually, as being a magazine writer I know the trend-story cliche: one in a curiosity, two is a coincidence and three, well, that's a trend. To whit:

1) On May 13, Serbian militia leader Nebojsa Minic was picked up in Mendoza on an arrest warrant on war crimes from the Hague. His militia, among other things, was accused of a massacre of 41 Albanian serparatists. In Argentina since September 2003, he is dying (here) of AIDS and is soon to be (a well-informed birdy tells me) the subject of at least one profile in a Major U.S. Newspaper.

2) In August, police in Buenos Aires arrested Milan Lukic, a Serbian wanted for the killing of 134 people (mostly Bosnians) during the Balkans war.

3) And on Monday, fugitive Cosa Nostra capo Pietro "The Butcher" Bonanno was captured in the Buenos Aires suburb of Hurlingham. He'd been in the country since November 2004 and was known in his adopted nabe as "Rafa."

Is it the wine? The steak? The atmosphere of casual corruption? What brings them here?