Miami, FL
Ex-Argentine officer faces trial in Miami in massacre case
MIAMI (AP) — A former Argentine navy officer goes on trial Monday in Miami for his alleged position in a 1972 bloodbath of political prisoners in his homeland.
Roberto Guillermo Bravo, who has lived within the U.S. for many years, is the one former Argentine navy officer accused of collaborating in what is named the Trelew Bloodbath who has but to face justice. Three others had been convicted in Argentina and given life sentences.
“For almost 50 years, the households of the victims of the Trelew Bloodbath have been ready for all its perpetrators to face accountability,” stated Katerina Siefkas, a lawyer for the Heart for Justice and Accountability, which is a kind of representing the plaintiffs.
“Our shoppers search the chance to current their story and to attain the justice” that has lengthy been denied to them,” she stated.
Bravo lengthy skirted trial in his homeland as a result of Argentine legislation forbids anybody from being tried if they aren’t current. The U.S. rejected Argentina’s request to extradite Bravo in 2010, however he’s now to bear a civil trial introduced underneath the Torture Sufferer Safety Act, a legislation that enables judicial motion in opposition to residents of the USA for acts allegedly dedicated elsewhere.
Greater than a dozen witnesses are scheduled to testify in a U.S. federal courtroom about what occurred on the Almirante Zar navy base within the Patagonian metropolis of Trelew in August 1972.
Bravo and different former navy officers allegedly shot to dying 16 unarmed political prisoners and significantly wounded three others, in response to the grievance introduced in Miami federal courtroom in October 2020. In addition they allegedly participated in torture and extrajudicial killings that violated each worldwide and U.S. legislation.
The official model of occasions claimed the political prisoners had tried to flee, however after the return of democracy in 1973, the three survivors recovered their freedom and instructed a special story. These three had been later kidnapped and murdered by the navy after a 1976 coup that ushered in Argentina’s final navy dictatorship.
The 4 plaintiffs are family of Raquel Camps, Eduardo Cappello, Alicia Krueguer and Marcela Santucho. Krueguer, Cappello and Santucho had been amongst these killed, whereas Camps was one of many three preliminary survivors.
Bravo left Argentina in 1973. He first labored as an Argentine navy attache and after retiring stayed in the USA, the place he turned a citizen in 1987.
The civil trial that begins Monday seeks financial compensation for the injury that Bravo’s alleged position within the killings triggered.
His legal professionals contend the killings didn’t occur in a bloodbath however fairly resulted from a shootout between navy officers and a bunch of guerrillas who had been making an attempt to flee from jail.
Bravo “has all the time been an sincere, contributing businessman with an untarnished report. He continues to forcefully deny these false allegations and he’ll vigorously defend this lawsuit and his honor,” Neal Sonnett stated when the lawsuit was filed in 2020.
The incident came about underneath the dictatorship of Gen. Alejandro Lanusse at a time when left-leaning guerilla teams had began to function Argentina. Human rights organizations say it set the stage for the in depth human rights violations that came about throughout Argentina’s final navy dictatorship in 1976-1983.
Argentina’s judiciary began to formally examine the Trelew killings after amnesty legal guidelines that had protected navy officers had been repealed in 2003.
Three different former navy officers — Luis Sosa, Emilio Del Actual and Carlos Marandino — had been accused of collaborating within the bloodbath with Bravo and had been sentenced to life in jail.
The authorized grievance filed by the plaintiffs within the U.S. case alleges Bravo threatened prisoners, tortured them, compelled them to undress and simulated their execution.
It says that on Aug. 22, 1972, Bravo and three different navy officers went into the prisoners’ cells whereas they had been sleeping and ordered that they go away and kind a line in opposition to a wall whereas wanting towards the bottom.
“Some fled again to their cells. Bravo and the opposite officers searched the cells for survivors to execute them,” the grievance says.
The plaintiffs say their aim will not be monetary.
“What they actually need is for Mr. Bravo to return to Argentina and face trial,” stated Ajay Krishnan at a legislation agency that additionally represents the plaintiffs. “But when they’ll’t acquire that, they usually nonetheless haven’t been capable of, they do what they need to do, which at the moment is the trial.”
——-
Rey reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.