\n A former Argentine police officer went on trial Wednesday for the alleged torture and disappearance of a young activist 46 years ago, during the South American country's last dictatorship.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mario Sandoval, who was extradited in 2019 after a long exile in France, is suspected of taking part in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of hundreds of people during the 1976-83 military dictatorship.\n<\/p>\n
\n This particular case centers on such crimes apparently committed against then-24-year-old architecture student and leftwing activist Hernan Abriata in 1976.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I am a prisoner of exception judged by a special court in a political trial,\" said Sandoval, 69, who proclaimed his innocence in an opening statement that lasted nearly two hours.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"All the accusations against me have the sole aim of judging me for what I was: a young federal state agent in the 1970s.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Sandoval is a former Buenos Aires police inspector who was accused of atrocities by survivors from the notorious Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), which served as the country's largest detention and torture facility.\n<\/p>\n
\n Some 5,000 people were sent there and most disappeared, taken by airplane in \"death flights\" and dumped into the River Plate. Only around 100 people detained in ESMA survived.\n<\/p>\n
\n Survivors say Sandoval, apparently given the nickname \"grilled steak\" for torturing prisoners tied to a metal bed frame with electricity, was particularly active in ESMA.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is a very long search for justice, 46 years,\" lawyer Sol Hourcade told AFP. \"The family identified those responsible for the kidnapping. We hope for a conviction.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Abriata's family hopes Sandoval is sentenced to the maximum 25 years in jail.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I was with Hernan when they knocked at the door,\" Monica Dittmar, Abriata's former partner, told AFP. She said Sandoval was the first state security agent to enter the room.\n<\/p>\n
\n When they took Abriata away, \"he showed me his credentials,\" Dittmar said, referring to the police officer.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dittmar said Abriata's mother, who is 95, \"is in poor health, she's losing her memory but still asks the questions: where is Hernan? What happened to Hernan? What did they do with him?\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - Found by a student -\n<\/p>\n
\n Sandoval arrived at the court handcuffed and with his face partially hidden by a medical mask.\n<\/p>\n
\n The first part of the proceedings was dedicated to the reading out of the charges against Sandoval, who cut a defiant figure at his trial, bringing up several points of law, insisting his rights were being infringed on and arguing against the legitimacy of the trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n Although he was present, the judges appeared by video link, while Abriata's family members, ESMA survivors and representatives of human rights organizations followed proceedings from an adjacent room separated by a glass wall.\n<\/p>\n
\n Carlos Loza, an ESMA survivor who shared a cell with Abriata, will testify in the trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sandoval fled to France in 1985, two years after the military junta fell, and built a new life there as a defense and security consultant.\n<\/p>\n
\n He taught at several institutions including the Sorbonne and the Institute of Higher Latin American Studies in Paris.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was found by a student at the Sorbonne after some ex-ESMA prisoners recognized him from photos.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sandoval was arrested at his home in the Paris suburbs.\n<\/p>\n
\n Although he gained French nationality in 1997, Argentina successfully obtained his extradition as he was not French at the time of the alleged crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sandoval had unsuccessfully petitioned France's Council of State in a bid to prevent his extradition.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since the prosecution of dictatorship figures resumed in 2006 after a decade of controversial amnesties, more than 1,000 people have been convicted of crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cases and investigations are ongoing against another 500 people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former Argentine police officer went on trial Wednesday for the alleged torture and disappearance of a young activist 46 years ago, during the South American country's last dictatorship. Mario Sandoval, who was extradited in 2019 after a long exile in France, is suspected of taking part in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of hundreds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-106482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n