Published on : 02/07/2022 – 23:48
An emblematic figure of repression during the dictatorship (1976-1983), known for his ferocity, Miguel Etchecolatz had been sentenced to life in seven trials. He died on Saturday July 2 at the age of 93.
With our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Jean Louis Buchet
Chief of the police of the province of Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1979, Miguel Etchecolatz was at the head of twenty clandestine detention centers, where hundreds of people were tortured and executed, while pregnant women gave birth in also clandestine maternities. , where their babies were torn from them to be given to families linked to the dictatorship.
But Miguel Etchecolatz was not content to give orders. He participated in certain operations in person, such as the arrest of Peronist labor activists in La Plata in October 1976, followed by the assassination of most of them, as testified by one of the survivors, Julio López.
no remorse
This testimony was decisive in Etchecolatz’s first life sentence, on September 19, 2006. On the eve of this sentence, the witness had disappeared, no doubt kidnapped and killed by relatives of the condemned man. Julio López is considered a ” gone from dictatorship to democracy ».
Sentenced to life in seven trials and awaiting trial in two others, Etchecolatz, who was serving his sentence in an ordinary prison, had been hospitalized a few days ago. He died at 93 without ever having expressed the slightest remorse. On the contrary, he has always claimed his actions under the dictatorship in the name of duty and of God.