(June 7) -- Relations between Argentina's government and its opponents in the press reached a new low today, after the adopted children of an opposition-backing media magnate were forced to undergo a court-ordered DNA test.

Supporters of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner hope that the results will show that Ernestina Herrera de Noble -- the 84-year-old owner of Grupo Clarin, which runs the country's largest newspaper and cable network -- was connected with state-approved murders carried out during Argentina's dark years of military rule.

Herrera de Noble adopted the two children at the heart of this controversial case, Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera, in 1976, soon after Isabel Peron was overthrown by a military coup. Campaigners allege that the siblings, who are set to inherit a $1 billion fortune, didn't come from an orphanage, but were in fact illegally snatched from one of the 30,000 people "disappeared" during Argentina's so-called Dirty War.

It's believed that between 1976 and 1983, around 500 children born to political prisoners being held in covert detention centers were removed by the dictatorship. The babies were then handed over to families loyal to the regime, while their real parents were executed. (A favored method of "disappearance" involved drugging prisoners, and then tossing their bodies from a helicopter as it hovered over the sea.)

Thanks to DNA testing, activist group the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo -- who aim to identify the 500 missing grandchildren and reunite them with their biological relations -- has so far managed to uncover 101 of the snatched kids. And the organization believes that Marcela and Felipe are children 102 and 103, suspecting they were passed to Herrera de Noble because of her close connections with the regime.

If the DNA tests prove that the aging press baroness knowingly adopted the children of people executed by the junta, she could face a hefty prison sentence. However, although an investigation was opened into their adoption in 2001, Marcela and Felipe have always refused to submit to genetic testing, saying that there is no evidence that their parents were disappeared and that don't want to know their names.

They also argue that their adoptive mother is being targeted because for the past two years she has been a consistent thorn in the side of the president. In 2008, the Clarin group's newspaper and TV channels sided with farmers who went on strike over the government's plans to introduce an export tax on many agricultural products. The president's approval ratings have never recovered from the incident.

Critics claim that President Kirchner took her revenge last year, by approving a new law proposed by the Grandmothers allowing for the forced extraction of DNA from adults who may be the children of political prisoners -- even those who didn't want to know their origins. Elisa Carrio, head of the centrist Radical Civic Union party, described the legislation as "pure fascism" at a press conference and said that it had been written with the aim of bringing down Herrera de Noble.

Last week, a judge sought to enforce that controversial law by ordering armed agents to track down Marcela and Felipe and videotape them surrendering items of clothing. Pieces of underwear and other items were eventually handed over to the authorities. DNA will be extracted from the clothing (the siblings had refused to give a blood sample) and compared with hundreds of samples provided by relatives of disappeared mothers and fathers.

The case has led many in Argentina to wonder whether it is appropriate to treat these possible victims of the junta as if they were common criminals. "[The Grandmothers'] work is noble, it's praiseworthy. But the end doesn't justify the means," Marcela told The Associated Press last week. "When human rights groups say they have to protect the victims, to take care of these children we love, is this love? It's a form of love that we don't understand. This is why we feel we aren't listened to."

She added that if they discovered they were the children of disappeared Argentines, they would try "to assimilate it, it's up to us to prepare ourselves and it's up to us to see what we want to do. Only we will know how we'll feel."

Her brother, however, said that the test will change nothing. "Whatever the result," Felipe told the news agency, "for me it's just one more sheet of paper, one more fact in my desk."