By Maximilian Heath
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – An Argentine court has sentenced a former police officer extradited from France to 15 years in jail for the kidnapping and disappearance of a young man during the country’s so-called Dirty War some four decades ago, a court clerk said on Thursday.
Mario Sandoval is one of many former officers who have been sentenced for crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship’s brutal crackdown against suspected leftists and political dissidents.
Human rights groups estimate that close to 30,000 people were kidnapped or disappeared at the hands of the armed forces in the South American nation. Sandoval is accused of multiple human rights violations, including torture.
He was sentenced for the disappearance of university student Hernan Abriata, who was kidnapped from his home in 1976. According to state news agency Telam, Sandoval had before the sentence said he was not involved in Abriata’s disappearance.
The court clerk, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters that Sandoval had been sentenced for being a “co-perpetrator of the crimes of unlawful deprivation of liberty, sadly aggravated in concurrence with the infliction of torture.”
The full grounds for the sentence will be made public on Feb. 2, the clerk added.
“This ruling is fundamental because it shows the importance of continuing to seek justice everywhere,” Horacio Pietragalla Corti, Argentina’s human rights secretary, told Telam.
After the fall of the dictatorship Sandoval moved to France where he obtained citizenship in 1997. After years of legal tussles, he was extradited in late 2019.
(Reporting by Maximilian Heath; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Paul Simao)
