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Suspected Torturer Is Extradited to Argentina
Mario Sandoval was extradited from France to his native Argentina to face charges of crimes committed during the dictatorship. In France, many wonder why it took so long.
By Elian Peltier and
A former police officer from Argentina who has lived for more than 30 years as a university lecturer and security expert in France is being extradited on Sunday to his native country, where he is wanted for crimes against humanity, including torture, committed during the country’s dictatorship, Argentine authorities said.
The news of the extradition of the former police officer, Mario Sandoval, was welcomed in Argentina by human rights activists and relatives of victims of the military regime, which killed up to 30,000 people, according to estimates, between 1976 and 1983.
But even as Mr. Sandoval was arrested at his home in a Paris suburb on Wednesday, many in France tried to fathom how a suspected torturer was able to live there for decades, teaching international affairs, participating in security conferences on Latin America and working with French security officials.
Prosecutors in Argentina have accused Mr. Sandoval, 66, of having participated in the death of an architecture student, Hernán Abriata, who disappeared in 1976 at a notorious secret detention center in Buenos Aires.
Argentine prosecutors believe he may also have be connected to the disappearance of many other civilians while he was a police officer in his 20s.
Argentina requested his extradition in 2012, but Mr. Sandoval denied the accusations and appealed every decision until he ran out of legal options. Last week, France’s top administrative court approved his extradition.
Mr. Sandoval appealed the decision to the European Court of Human Rights; his appeal was rejected.
“It’s a relief and a delight to see Mr. Sandoval finally extradited,” said Sophie Thonon-Wesfreid, a French lawyer who has represented Argentina in the proceedings. “Hernán Abriata’s mother is 92, she’s been waiting for 43 years.”
Mr. Sandoval’s lawyer, Jérôme Rousseau, said the trial his client would face in Argentina would be “political,” in a country that he said was undergoing a “purge.”
Since 2006, Argentina has undergone an enormous effort to punish former military officers and their accomplices. Courts have convicted 962 of the almost 3,300 people who have been accused of crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, and stealing babies from pregnant detainees and giving them up for adoption.
Mr. Abriata was one of about 5,000 people who disappeared at the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy, or ESMA, which was converted into Argentina’s largest clandestine detention center.
The former detention center is now a human rights memorial.
Some of those suspected of these crimes, like Mr. Sandoval, moved abroad after the end of the dictatorship, delaying their prosecution and extending the wait of family members who sought justice for their missing relatives.
“This means the beginning of the end to his impunity, an impunity he enjoyed since the day he was in charge of a gang at the ESMA and kidnapped my brother,” said Laura Abriata, Mr. Abriata’s sister.
After Mr. Sandoval moved to France in 1985, he taught at the Université of Marne-la-Vallée, outside of Paris, and at the New Sorbonne University. He obtained French citizenship in 1997, according to his lawyer.
At the New Sorbonne, he worked at the Institute of High Studies for Latin America, a highly regarded institution known for welcoming exiles who fled the dictatorships in Argentine, Brazil or Chile. Many of his colleagues felt Mr. Sandoval’s presence there had left a stain on the institute.
“It is pathetic that someone accused of crimes against humanity, a torturer, was allowed to train young people at university,” said Denis Merklen, a professor at the institute who, like Mr. Sandoval, holds French and Argentine citizenship.
Mr. Sandoval was hired as a lecturer at the institute in 1999, when France’s current education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, ran it. Through an aide, Mr. Blanquer denied knowing at the time Mr. Sandoval was hired, about the charges he is now facing.
For more than 20 years after the end of the dictatorship, two amnesty laws in Argentina protected officials involved in the regime’s crimes. The laws were overturned in 2005 — the same year Mr. Sandoval was dismissed from the New Sorbonne, although for reasons unrelated to the accusations he currently faces.
His name was connected to the crimes committed by the dictatorship in 2008, when the Argentine newspaper Página 12 published an investigation about him.
Olivier Compagnon, a professor of contemporary history who ran the institute from 2015 to 2019 and taught an introductory class on Venezuela with Mr. Sandoval in 2003, said students complained that Mr. Sandoval was obsessed with weapons and security issues. He also questioned how the institute could have recruited someone who had so few qualifications.
Mr. Sandoval’s resume from the late 1990s, which The New York Times saw, starts in 1985 and states that he taught at a dozen institutions, but didn’t specify which universities he had attended.
“It’s nonsensical,” Mr. Compagnon said. “Today we would never hire someone with such a vague profile and resume.”
Mr. Abriata’s relatives said they hoped justice could now be done.
“We expect a fair trial with all the legal guarantees so his constitutional rights are respected, which none of the 30,000 who were disappeared enjoyed,” Ms. Abriata, Hernán Abriata’s sister, said.
Elian Peltier reported from London, and Daniel Politi from Buenos Aires.
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