Argentina: 15 years in prison for a former dictatorship policeman
Monica Dittmar, the wife of missing Hernan Abriata, holds a picture of him as she awaits the start of the trial against former Argentine policeman Mario Sandoval for Abriata's disappearance in federal courts in Buenos Aires, September 14 2022. AFP - LUIS ROBAYO
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In Argentina, 15 years in prison for Mario Sandoval: the former policeman was sentenced in connection with the disappearance of a student, Hernan Abriata, in 1976. He is suspected of having participated in hundreds of kidnappings, torture and disappearances under the dictatorship.
After the dictatorship, and thanks to the amnesty laws voted in Argentina - they have since been repealed, he took refuge in France.
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Since 1985, Mario Sandoval had rebuilt his life in France, in the academic world, as a lecturer.
And it was one of his students, daughter of Argentine exiles, who recognized him in the 2000s – as well as the Argentine press.
After trying all the remedies, the ex-policeman was finally
extradited in 2019
– his naturalization acquired in 1997 did not protect him, because he was not French at the material time.
France only agreed to let him go to stand trial in one case, the disappearance of a student and Peronist activist, Hernan Abriata, kidnapped in October 1976 and therefore the body was never found.
He is said to have been thrown from a plane into the ocean, like many other past victims of the Navy's School of Mechanics, Esma - one wing of which has become the most infamous detention and torture center of the dictatorship.
Mario Sandoval denounces a political trial, says he is the victim of a homonymy.
He is suspected of having been one of Esma's most active agents.
If the Argentine justice wants to judge him on other cases, it will have to ask the French justice for an extension of the extradition agreement, by providing evidence on the other crimes with which he is accused.
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