A former Argentine police official "Mario Sandoval" linked to the killing of hundreds of people during what is known as the "dirty war" that the country lived in will arrive in Buenos Aires on Monday, after France extradited him to Argentina.
Mario Sandoval was arrested at his home on Wednesday near Paris, after the French authorities allowed his extradition at the end of an 8-month judicial battle.
The 66-year-old former official, who has been residing in France since 1985, was granted French citizenship because many people did not know his full identity, on a plane that left Paris around midnight on Sunday.
"Everything happened as expected," said a lawyer for the Argentine state.
Argentina suspects that Sandoval participated in more than 500 kidnappings, torture and killings, when about 30,000 people “disappeared” during the Argentine military rule (1976-1983).
But he was only extradited based on the supposed kidnapping in October 1976 of Hernan Apriata, an architecture student, whose body had never been found.
The Argentine authorities indicate that investigators have several statements in which witnesses linked Sandoval (known in his country as the "butcher" of the dictatorial regime) to the killing of Abriata .
Sandoval's lawyers have indicated that he will not receive a fair trial in Argentina, where he may be subjected to torture or arrest in poor conditions.
But their appeals to the European Court of Human Rights to consider his case failed.
Abriata was arrested at a notorious training school belonging to the Argentine navy in Buenos Aires, where about five thousand people were detained and tortured after the 1976 military coup, and many of them were thrown from planes at sea or in the Plate river.
Sophie Thonon, a lawyer for the Argentine state, told Agence FrancePresse that the 92-year-old mother of Abriata was "waiting impatiently" for Sandoval to appear before his country.
Sandoval, who denied the accusations against him, fled Argentina after the fall of the military regime.
Although he is a French citizen, he can be extradited, as the crime occurred before he acquired citizenship.
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