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News > Argentina

Argentina: Military Figures Arrested over Dictatorship Massacre

  • Judge Daniel Rafecas ordered the detention of 10 ex-military officials involved in the massacre of five young Argentine leftist leaders during the dictatorship in 1976.

    Judge Daniel Rafecas ordered the detention of 10 ex-military officials involved in the massacre of five young Argentine leftist leaders during the dictatorship in 1976. | Photo: Twitter/@FelicindaCluney

Published 15 December 2021
Opinion

Among the five young people murdered was María Victoria "Vicky" Walsh (daughter of journalist Rodolfo Walsh).

Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas interrogated on Wednesday a group of ten former military officers arrested the day before for their participation in a massacre against militants of the Montoneros organization perpetrated in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, which resulted in the murder of five young people, including María Victoria "Vicky" Walsh (daughter of journalist Rodolfo Walsh), and the kidnapping and transfer to clandestine centers of four others.

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On September 29, 1976, the massacre took place in the Villa Luro neighborhood. Between officers and members of the Army, the Police and the Gendarmerie, it is estimated that more than 130 uniformed personnel participated.

Alberto José Molina Benuzzi, Ignacio José Bertrán, Ismael Salame and José Carlos Coronel lost their lives. "Vicky" Walsh took her own life before being captured.

She was 26 years old at the time and that day, she was carrying her one-year-old daughter, Victoria María Costa, who witnessed the massacre. The military later returned the child to the family.

According to the reconstruction of what happened, young Lucy Matilde Gómez de Mainer, Juan Cristóbal Mainer, Maricel Marta Mainer and Ramón Alcides Baravalle were kidnapped.

"Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas ordered the arrest of 10 former military officers involved in the death of 5 Montoneros militants during the dictatorship, including one of the daughters of journalist Rodolfo Walsh, murdered by the dictators in 1977." 

The investigation seeks to establish the responsibilities of different squads of the Army, the Federal Police and the Gendarmerie in the hunt against the militants of Montoneros, a Peronist organization that fought the Argentine dictatorship with weapons.

The former military members are being held at the Federal Penitentiary Service. After their questioning, Judge Rafecas must decide within ten days whether to prosecute them, which would lead them to face charges of aggravated homicide, attempted homicide and kidnapping.

About the death of his daughter, journalist Rodolfo Walsh wrote: "Vicki could have chosen other paths that were different without being dishonorable, but the one she chose was the fairest, the most generous, the most reasoned. Her lucid death is a synthesis of her short, beautiful life. She did not live for herself, she lived for others, and those others are millions...."

A brilliant journalist and author of the book "Operation Massacre," Walsh was assassinated the following year by the military forces, after his "Open letter from a writer to the Military Junta," a text in which he exposed the atrocities committed by the dictatorship.

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