Brazil has delivered a suspected henchman from the former military dictatorship in Argentina to the neighboring country. The 69-year-old Gonzalo Sanchez was transferred to the Argentine border town of Puerto Iguazu, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday (local time) in Buenos Aires. He should be tried for crimes against humanity.
Sanchez was arrested on Monday following an international arrest warrant in the coastal town of Paraty, some 270 kilometers south of Rio de Janeiro. He was sought in connection with the crimes committed in the former marine engineering school ESMA. A torture center for political prisoners of the military dictatorship was housed there.
Thrown into river from airplanes
Around 5,000 of the prisoners there disappeared without a trace. Many of the victims of torture were thrown into the Rio de la Plata from airplanes. The former naval policeman Sanchez is held responsible, among other things, for the death of the writer and journalist Rodolfo Walsh and the 17-year-old Swede Dagmar Hagelin. She was mistaken for an underground fighter and brought to ESMA.
Human rights organizations state that the number of people who disappeared without trace during the Argentine military dictatorship (1976–83) is up to 30,000.
