Gonzalo Sánchez is considered one of the members of the task force of the secret prison located at the School of Mechanics of the Argentine Navy in Buenos Aires, where opponents of the regime were tortured and executed.
Former Argentine naval officer Gonzalo Sánchez, accused of crimes against humanity during the military junta, was extradited on Thursday from Brazil to his home country. This was reported by the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
“Gonzalo Sánchez, involved in the repression, detained on Monday in Rio de Janeiro, is already in Argentina to be tried for crimes against humanity,” reads the statement.
Sánchez is currently being held at the Federal Investigations Directorate building in Buenos Aires. As noted in the Foreign Ministry, during the transfer of the detainee, law enforcement agencies of Brazil, which recorded more than 188 thousand infections with coronavirus, provided the Argentine side with the results of medical examination of the former military and the test for COVID-19.
Sanchez, who was wanted by Interpol, is considered one of the members of the task force of the secret prison, located in the school of mechanics of the Argentine Navy in Buenos Aires. In recent years, the military dictatorship had tortured and executed opponents of the regime, whose bodies had subsequently been dumped in the ocean from aircraft. Sanchez in particular is suspected of involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Argentine journalist and writer Rodolphe Walsh.
Gonzalez fled Argentina in 2005. In 2013, he was arrested for the first time in the largest Latin American republic on the territory of the Argentine extradition request, but in 2016 was placed under house arrest in Brazil by court order. In 2019, the Federal Supreme Court, the highest judicial authority in Brazil, authorized the extradition of a 69-year-old Argentine to his home country, after which he escaped from justice. In January 2020, a new arrest warrant was issued for him.
On 24 March 1976, the Argentinean military, led by General Jorge Rafael Videla, seized power. Parliament was dissolved, curfews were imposed, the activities of political parties and trade unions were suspended and repression began. According to human rights organizations, during the military dictatorship, which lasted until 1983, 30 thousand people had disappeared without a trace in Argentina. The last head of the military junta was General Reynaldo Bignone, who in 1983 transferred power to the civilian government of President Raúl Alfonsin, who had won the elections.