\n A former Argentine military intelligence officer accused of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s has been arrested at a Buenos Aires hospital where he was being treated, judicial sources said Friday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Onetime colonel Jose Osvaldo \"Balita\" Ribeiro had been No. 2 in Argentina's Battalion 601, an army unit blamed for the disappearances of hundreds of opposition figures as part of the anti-Communist Operation Condor carried out in several South American countries.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was tried in absentia in France in 2010 and sentenced to 35 years in prison in connection with the disappearance of a French-Chilean dual national, Jean-Yves Claudet. France had asked Argentina to arrest Ribeiro.\n<\/p>\n
\n For now, Ribeiro remains hospitalized under police guard, diagnosed with senile dementia, according to hospital sources.\n<\/p>\n
\n As part of Operation Condor, Ribeiro coordinated with the DINA secret police of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in detaining refugees in Argentina supporting opposition forces, according to lawyer Sophie Thonon-Wesfreid, who represents French citizens who disappeared under the Argentine dictatorship.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ribeiro was accused by French judge Roger Leloire of being the mastermind, along with Chilean DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, of the \"disappearance of Claudet on October 31, 1976.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Many of those who \"disappeared\" at the time -- often left-wing activists, as well as trade unionists, journalists and students -- were in fact killed by military forces or right-wing death squads.\n<\/p>\n
\n Argentine courts have handed out prison sentences to more than 1,000 officials, military officers or agents of the dictatorship since the government of Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) repealed the country's amnesty laws.\n<\/p>\n
\n From 1980 to 1985, Ribeiro was in Nicaragua to train the right-wing \"contra\" paramilitary fighters opposing the Sandinist revolution.\n<\/p>\n
\n A French judge issued an extradition request for Ribeiro in 2001, but it was never carried out, according to Thonon-Wesfreid, who said it was now being dusted off to use again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former Argentine military intelligence officer accused of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s has been arrested at a Buenos Aires hospital where he was being treated, judicial sources said Friday. Onetime colonel Jose Osvaldo \"Balita\" Ribeiro had been No. 2 in Argentina's Battalion 601, an army unit blamed for […]<\/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-33234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n