Former Colonel Eduardo Ferro, in Montevideo, in an undated image.PABLO PORCIUNCULA
Agents of the National Police have handed over to the Uruguayan authorities the 73-year-old former Colonel Eduardo Augusto Ferro Bizzozero, wanted for crimes of genocide and against humanity committed between the 1970s and 1980s and responsible for the so-called Operation Condor in the Latin American country.
The accused, known by the aliases of
Guillermo and Óscar
,
was arrested on January 28 in the Castellón town of Peñíscola.
He had already been arrested in September 2017 in Madrid, but took advantage of the extradition process to disappear until his trail was recovered in the tourist coastal town.
Arrested in Madrid one of the main implicated in Uruguay in the 'Plan Cóndor'
The Uruguayan judicial authorities accuse him of having illegally detained, tortured and disappeared young militants of organizations opposed to the Military Government of Uruguay in force between 1973 and 1985, whose activity was essentially the distribution of propaganda and the organization of demonstrations and political meetings .
For these facts, the former colonel is accused of crimes of genocide and against humanity.
The detainee was allegedly one of those responsible in Uruguay for Operation Condor, a systematic attempt to end political dissidence in Latin America hatched during the period of military dictatorships that followed one another in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The arrest was carried out jointly by the Castellón Provincial Information Brigade and by Interpol, by virtue of an arrest and detention order issued by the National High Court, as reported by the Police in a statement.
The military man was arrested on January 28 in the Castellón town of Peñíscola, although his delivery to the General Directorate Against Organized Crime and Uruguayan Interpol took place last Saturday.
The National High Court had issued an arrest warrant in 2018, requested by the authorities of that country with the aim of proceeding with his prosecution.
In fact, Ferro was already arrested in 2017 in Madrid, in application of the international arrest order that weighed on the military man.
The head of the Central Court of Instruction 1, Santiago Pedraz, ordered his imprisonment pending the Uruguayan authorities send the documentation to proceed with his extradition.
This was granted in 2018, but the military took advantage of the process to flee from the Spanish authorities.
In June 2018, Interpol Spain again requested an extension to specify the extradition to Uruguay because it could not locate him, according to the Sudestada.com.uy portal
,
dedicated to journalistic investigation and data journalism.
Already in Uruguay, the former colonel, escorted by Interpol officials, was transferred on Saturday first to a judicial headquarters, in whose surroundings “members of the Association of Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Detainees and Plenary Memory and Justice, waited with posters for the arrival of the ex-repressor ”, says the same Uruguayan information portal.
After testifying before a judge for six hours, he entered the Domingo Arena prison, where several military officers accused of crimes committed during the dictatorship are serving their sentences.
The prosecutor specialized in Crimes Against Humanity, Ricardo Perciballe, reported the preventive detention “until the new exceptions of unconstitutionality that were raised are resolved.
That have already been resolved, but that were raised again ”, according to Europa Press.
The Spanish Police have highlighted that the arrest, together with its subsequent delivery to the Uruguayan authorities, "demonstrates the strong commitment of the National Police to promote international cooperation in the bilateral and multilateral fields."
Colonel Ferro is investigated for his alleged participation in the disappearance of the union leader Óscar Tassino in July 1977. At that time, the military man was the head of the Military Counterintelligence Battalion, integrated into the Coordinating Organism for Anti-Subversive Operations (OCOA) of the Uruguayan dictatorship , charged with arresting, torturing and making dissidents disappear.
According to witnesses, the military man was one of the people who went to the opponent's home and took him to the La Tablada clandestine detention center.
Tassino was never heard from again.
Ferro is also being investigated for other events of Operation Condor.
Among them, the disappearance and murder of the communist leader Fernando Miranda;
the disappearance of María Claudia García de Gelman, daughter-in-law of the Argentine poet Juan Gelman;
the kidnapping in Brazil of Universindo Rodríguez and Lilián Celiberti, and the torture and disappearance of Andrés Bellizi and Jorge Gonçalvez in Argentina.
After the arrival of democracy, the colonel was allegedly responsible for spying on political parties, unions and organizations between 1988 and 1991, a scandal currently being investigated by a commission of the Uruguayan Parliament.