Italy’s justice minister has refused Argentina’s request to extradite a priest accused of crimes against humanity during the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Rev Franco Reverberi, 86, who served as military chaplain during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military regime, faces charges related to the alleged murder in 1976 of the 20-year-old political activist José Guillermo Berón, and his alleged participation in torture.
Reverberi, who has joint Argentinian and Italian nationality, left Argentina in 2011 after trials against pro-junta figures had begun in Argentina, returning to his home town near Parma. Since then, he has lived undisturbed in Italy, where he continued to celebrate mass until recently. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has not been convicted by the courts or excommunicated by the Vatican.
Italy’s top criminal court confirmed his extradition in October, rejecting the priest’s appeal.
But on Friday Carlo Nordio, the justice minister, vetoed the extradition, citing Reverberi’s advanced age and his health condition.
“The Italian justice minister’s move is in contrast to the judicial decisions against Reverberi,” said Arturo Salerni, a lawyer who represented Argentina in the case. “Our last hope is that Reverberi can be prosecuted in Italy.”
Jorge Ithurburu, president for 24 Marzo – an NGO based in Rome representing the relatives of victims of the Argentinian dictatorship – called for Reverberi to face trial in Italy.
“Impunity is not provided for by the law,” he said. “We are already in contact with the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights in San Rafael, Argentina, which is ready to file a complaint with Italian authorities for Reverberi’s crimes. If the priest is not extradited, then he should be prosecuted in Italy.”
After the 1976 coup, Argentina’s military systematically crushed any potential opposition and eventually murdered about 30,000 people, almost all of them unarmed non-combatants.
Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth; it is believed that about 500 babies were given to childless military couples to raise as their own. So far 133 of these children born in captivity, now in their 40s, have been reunited with their biological families.
In 1985, just two years after Argentina returned to democracy, the junta leader Jorge Videla was convicted of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.
Many of the criminals who were part of those regimes at the time fled to Italy, taking advantage of their Italian origins and dual nationality.
In a parallel case, a trial is set to start in Rome on 22 April against an Argentinian army officer, Lt Col Carlos Luis Malatto, accused of the premeditated killing of eight people under the Videla regime.
The former military officer is accused of crimes against humanity in Argentina, but, like Reverberi, he fled the country in 2011 and had been living undisturbed in a tourist village in the province of Messina, Sicily.
