He believed he was protected first by the impunity laws passed in Argentina after the dictatorship (1976-1983), then by his French nationality, acquired in 1997. Mario Sandoval, 69, was finally sentenced on Wednesday, December 21, in Buenos Aires, to fifteen years in prison, for the kidnapping and torture, in 1976, of a 24-year-old student, Hernan Abriata.
“The court declares that the facts in question constitute crimes against humanity, said Judge Fernando Canero, and does not respond to the request of the accused to consider the facts as prescribed. » In the courtroom of the Comodoro Py court, cries of joy and applause accompanied the reading of the verdict. “It was forty-six years of struggle, including eight to obtain his extradition from France, we never gave up! », rejoiced Monica Dittmar, the widow of Hernan Abriata.
The various civil parties had asked for between twenty-one years in prison and life imprisonment. The Human Rights Secretariat, as well as the prosecution, had requested a twenty-year sentence. “I stand in solidarity with the pain of the Abriata family, but I am not Inspector Sandoval who arrested Hernan Abriata”, had reiterated, before the verdict, Mario Sandoval, by videoconference from Campo de Mayo prison, from where he was attending the trial. Pleading homonymy and error on the person has always been his line of defense.
“I am full of anger”
In the courtroom, members of human rights organizations and former political prisoners surrounded the Abriata family and Monica Dittmar, who have attended all hearings since the start of the trial on September 14. Before the verdict was read, they held up placards with photos of the young man.
“I am full of anger, we have been waiting for this moment for so many years, and to see this coward hiding again and again, it enrages me,” explained M.me Dittmar au World by telephone, before the reading of the verdict. She was referring to the fact that Mario Sandoval refused to physically attend most hearings, and wore a mask even when he was remote and alone in a room.
Hernan Abriata had been kidnapped on the night of October 30, 1976 by a commando in civilian clothes and taken to the School of Marine Mechanics, the sinister ESMA, from which around 5,000 opponents disappeared during the dictatorship. Last seen in January 1977 in the attic of ESMA, where prisoners were locked up, Hernan never reappeared. It is assumed that, like most inmates, he was loaded onto a plane and thrown into the ocean.
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