ARGENTINA: A retired Argentinian navy officer was extradited from Mexico to Spain this weekend to face charges of torture, terrorism and genocide allegedly committed during Argentina's last military dictatorship, between 1976 and 1983. Michael McGaughan reports.
After a lengthy appeal process Mexico's Supreme Court ordered Cavallo's extradition on charges of terrorism and genocide, although the charge of torture was ruled to be beyond the Mexican statute of limitations.
Cavallo (52) appeared before Judge Baltasar Garzon in a Madrid court yesterday where the judge briefly outlined the charges against him, relating to 264 instances of forced disappearance, 159 of kidnapping and 21 of torture. He was remanded in custody and ordered to reappear in court on July 7th.
Cavallo was the team leader of a notorious "task group" operating from the Navy School of Mechanics in downtown Buenos Aires, one of 300 clandestine death camps established throughout the country. The navy officer belonged to an elite corps who monitored the detention and disappearance of thousands of political suspects in a reign of terror that left upwards of 30,000 dead.
Cavallo's job was to confirm the "irrecoverable" nature of suspects deemed of no further use on the torture table and subsequently consigned to "death flights" during which they were drugged and thrown from aircraft into the River Plate.
He ran a government concession for a national car registry programme in Mexico until a local newspaper challenged his identity, accusing him of being a former "dirty war" intelligence agent who went by the alias Serpico.
Cavallo was arrested in the Caribbean resort of Cancun in August 2000, en route to Argentina, where he faced little prospect of a trial thanks to a prior amnesty for repressers.
"This is the first time ever that one country has extradited a person to another country to stand trial for human rights crimes that happened in a third," said Mr Reed Brody, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch in New York. "This extradition sends a message to soldiers and police officers around the world that if they commit torture today, they could be prosecuted somewhere tomorrow," said Mr Brody.
If convicted Cavallo could be condemned to 1,000 years behind bars, which effectively means a maximum period of 30 years.