A judge in Rome has ordered Lt Col Carlos Luis Malatto, a former Argentine army officer accused of murder and forced disappearances during Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship, to stand trial in Italy for the premeditated killing of eight people.
The former military officer is accused of crimes against humanity in Argentina, but he fled the country in 2011 and had been living in a tourist village in the province of Messina, Sicily. In a letter to the court of appeal in the Argentine state of Mendoza, Argentine prosecutors alleged that Malatto “actively participated in various detention procedures and is one of the most infamous perpetrators” of the dictatorship “for his participation in interrogations under torture”.
The trial in Argentina, however, has never started as in that country an accused person cannot be tried in absentia.
In 2014, Rome refused Argentina’s request to extradite him because, according to judges at the time, there was not enough evidence against the former army officer. Nevertheless, the following year, Italy launched an investigation against Malatto for the murders of eight people, including Marie Anne Erize, a French-Argentinian model; Juan Carlos Cámpora, the rector of the University of San Juan; Angel José Alberto Carvajal, a Communist party official, and Jorge Bonil, a soldier.
Malatto’s presence in Italy sparked a row in Argentina after some Italian newspapers revealed he was living undisturbed in Italy while the relatives of the victims and the Argentine state were seeking justice.
“I wonder how a genocide [suspect] can live freely when in 1976 in our province alone in San Juan, when he was a lieutenant colonel, more than 100 people disappeared,” said Viviana Arias, 56, the daughter of Florentino Arias, kidnapped on the morning of 23 October 1976, from his workplace in the city of San Juan where Malatto was operating. Arias was married, a father to nine children and worked in a printing press that he owned. His remains were never found.
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 just 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 coup leader Jorge Rafaél Videla was convicted of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.
This isn’t the first time Italy has dealt with a case related to South American dictatorships.
“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,” says Arturo Salerni, the lawyer representing the relatives of the victims allegedly killed by Malatto. “Initially, they lived peacefully in the country. Then, when the authorities started investigating them, many were prosecuted and convicted.”
In 2019, an Italian court sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.
The trial, the first of its kind in Europe, began in 2015 and focused on the responsibility of senior officials in the military dictatorships of Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina for the killing and disappearance of 43 people, including 23 Italian citizens. Those sentenced included Francisco Morales Bermúdez, who was the president of Peru from 1975 to 1980; Juan Carlos Blanco, a former foreign minister in Uruguay; Pedro Espinoza Bravo, a former deputy intelligence chief in Chile; and Jorge Néstor Fernández Troccoli, a Uruguayan former naval intelligence officer.
“Many of them thought they would get away with it in Italy,” says Salerni. “But instead, many received harsher sentences than they would have possibly received in their home countries.”
Malatto’s trial will begin on 22 April, it was announced on Tuesday. If convicted, he faces a life sentence. “I hope for a severe prison sentence,” says Arias. “Enough with the privileges! I hope he will be judged by the law, an opportunity they didn’t give to my father.”
Malatto’s lawyer, Augusto Sinagra, said: “The testimonial acquisitions (which are all vague, imprecise, and hearsay) obtained in Italy or in Argentina during the preliminary investigation phase have no value. Whoever accuses Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Luis Malatto must physically be present at the trial in Rome; they must also answer the defence’s questions and assume any responsibility resulting from false testimonies.
“Certainly, I have conveyed to Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Luis Malatto every possible outcome of the trial, whether positive or negative. Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Luis Malatto lives ‘this situation’ with the absolute serenity of someone who is innocent and knows it.”
A total 1,204 perpetrators have been convicted so far in Argentina’s continuing human rights trials, starting with the historic trial of the nine members of the military junta in 1985. In the latest round of convictions last week, four former officers received 25 years each for crimes against human rights, including sex crimes, according to the human rights secretariat, the plaintiff in most of the trials.
The continuation of these trials may be in jeopardy, however, after the inauguration on 10 December of the new libertarian president, Javier Milei, who during the presidential debate on 1 October said that “in the 1970s there was a war” with “excesses” by the military.
This affirmation jars with the ample historical and judicial evidence that the military imposed a plan in which most of the regime’s estimated 30,000 mortal victims died not in battle but after being kidnapped from their homes and tortured in death camps.
“My job is to find the family members of the victims and support them during their testimony in Italy,” says Jorge Ithurburu, a lawyer for 24 Marzo, a Rome-based NGO representing the relatives of the desaparecidos. “Since there is a new government in Argentina, my job has become more difficult because many family members who work for the state are now afraid to speak out. They fear reprisals from the authorities if they expose themselves and request permission to travel to Italy to testify against the Argentine military of the regime.”
But Milei’s message seems to have hit a receptive audience. A poll released early in December by Opina Argentina found that only 47% of Argentinians still believed the military had imposed a systematic plan of annihilation, while 43% agreed with the “excesses” theory, and 10% were undecided.
Arias says: “I believe that the new president has the duty to guarantee the continuity of the fight for the truth, for the memory and justice of the desaparecidos,” says Arias. “Even if Argentina’s justice is very slow, as the daughter of a disappeared, I will continue to fight until I know what happened to my father.”
