The Criminal Court of Rome sentenced to life imprisonment former Uruguayan officer Jorge Tróccoli, found guilty of “torture, disappearances and murders” committed during Uruguay’s military dictatorship (1973-1985), as part of Plan Condor, the network of repressive coordination between military governments in the Southern Cone under direct supervision of the United States.

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As reported by the newspaper La Stampa, Tróccoli, 78 years old and former head of the Intelligence Service (S2) of the Naval Rifle Corps (Fusna), was sentenced again last Tuesday, despite the fact that he had already served another life sentence since 2021 for the disappearance of 21 people.

This time, the Italian justice system found him guilty of the murder of Rafaela Filipazzi, José Agustín Potenza and Elena Quinteros, which occurred between 1976 and 1977.

Filipazzi and Potenza, both Argentine citizens, were kidnapped in Montevideo on May 27, 1977, transferred to the Fusna facilities under the control of Tróccoli and then handed over to agents of the Paraguayan dictatorship, as part of the Plan Condor prisoner exchange.

His remains were found in Asunción in 2013, while Quinteros’ whereabouts remain unknown.

The ruling was handed down on the premises of Rebibbia prison, where the former officer is serving his previous sentence. During the trial, prosecutor Erminio Amelio warned: “You cannot ask to be considered equal to the victims. There are those who were on the wrong side of history and those who were on the right side.”

Lawyer Arturo Salerni, representative of the victims, stressed that the verdict reaffirms the principle of universal justice. “This important ruling tells us that memory and justice cannot be forgotten,” he said.

For her part, lawyer Alessia Merluzzi, representing the Uruguayan State, said that the decision “makes up for the time lost in all these years of impunity” and restores “fundamental values in the face of dehumanization and violence.” Tróccoli, who took refuge in Italy in 2007 using his dual nationality to evade Uruguayan justice, was located and arrested in the coastal town of Marina di Camerota, in the Campania region.

Italian court documents link him to at least 27 victims of kidnapping, torture and murder, in cooperation with the authoritarian governments of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay

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