SPAIN: RETIRED ARGENTINE NAVAL OFFICER RICARDO CAVALLO APPEARS IN COURT FACING CHARGES OF TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE

Record ID: 230499

  • Title: SPAIN: RETIRED ARGENTINE NAVAL OFFICER RICARDO CAVALLO APPEARS IN COURT FACING CHARGES OF TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE
  • Date: 30th June 2003
  • Summary: (EU) MADRID, SPAIN (JUNE 29, 2003) (REUTERS) 1. SLV EXTERIOR OF SPANISH HIGH COURT, POLICEMEN AND POLICE VANS; SLV POLICE VAN ENTERING COURT, BRINGING RETIRED ARGENTINIAN NAVAL OFFICER RICARDO CAVALLO; FLAG (4 SHOTS) 0.29 (EU) MADRID, SPAIN (FILE) (REUTERS) 2. MV SPANISH JUDGE BALTASAR GARZON ENTERING COURT 0.41 (EU) MADRID, SP
  • Embargoed: 15th July 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MADRID, SPAIN
  • Country: Spain
  • Reuters ID: LVAA2EE4WS524AEL9HTAN31FK2JF
  • Story Text: A retired Argentine naval officer has appeared in court
    in Spain from Mexico to face charges of terrorism and genocide
    and anger of families who lost relatives during Argentina's
    "dirty war" of 1970s and 80s.

    A former Argentine naval officer appeared in a Spanish
    court on Sunday (June 29, 2003) to face charges that he
    committed acts of terrorism and genocide during Argentina's
    "dirty war" of the 1970s and 80s.

    Ricardo Cavallo, who denies the charges, was extradited
    from Mexico on Saturday (June 28) to appear before Spanish
    Judge Baltasar Garzon, in what activists hailed as a landmark
    for human rights.

    Garzon, who campaigned unsuccessfully to bring Chilean
    former dictator General Augusto Pinochet to trial, has charged
    Cavallo with committing crimes during Argentina's 1976-83
    military rule. If found guilty he faces up to 30 years in
    jail.

    Up to 30,000 people were killed or "disappeared" in the
    Argentine military's war against leftist guerrillas and their
    sympathisers. Many were tortured, drugged and in some cases,
    thrown from aircraft into the River Plate or the Atlantic
    Ocean.

    Cavallo has been accused of having worked in the notorious
    School of Naval Mechanics in Buenos Aires, a secret torture
    centre during the military junta's reign.

    Campaigners said the fact that the nationality of
    Cavallo's suspected victims was not an issue and that he was
    being tried
    for crimes he is accused of committing elsewhere sends an
    important human rights message.

    Earlier this month, Mexico's highest court ordered
    Cavallo's extradition but threw out a charge of torture.

    Cavallo was whisked from a military airbase to the High
    Court in central Madrid in a police convoy. After several
    hours,
    an initial hearing was suspended to allow the bespectacled
    51-year-old and his lawyer to study the charges.

    Lawyers involved in the prosecution said Cavallo, dressed
    in a dark suit but not wearing the tie he was sporting when he
    left
    Mexico, had appeared calm and collected during the proceedings
    but had declined to make any statement.

    A small group of relatives of the thousands who were
    tortured and killed during the Argentine dictatorship and
    their Supporters gathered outside the austere court building, waving
    placards calling for the extradition of other accused killers.

    One of the victims of the dictatorship, Malou Cerutti,
    calmly recalled the night of January 12, 1977 when her husband
    Omar and father Victorio were robbed and then taken away by a
    military unit from their farm in the province of Mendoza.

    "It was a dreadful night, it was bloody and painful. I
    was in the flat with my children, and they put sheets over our
    heads and gagged us. And later, they forced us to watch as
    they tortured my husband. We stayed for hours, they broke
    everything and they took everything from the house," she said.

    Cerutti, who fled to Mexico with her three children with
    the help of a church group, never saw her husband or father
    again.

    She said she now wants Cavallo to go to jail for the
    longest period possible and to reveal what happened to them.

    Cavallo ran a government concession for a national car
    registry programme in Mexico until a Mexican newspaper accused
    him of being a former intelligence agent.

    He was arrested in the resort of Cancun in August 2000
    bound for Argentina, where he would probably have been covered
    by an amnesty.


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