After half a century of impunity, one of the perpetrators of the crimes perpetrated in 1972, known as the Trelew Massacre, will be tried this Monday, June 27 in the United States after relatives of four of his victims filed a civil lawsuit against him. This is the former Lieutenant of the Navy Roberto Guillermo Bravo who has been living in the US city of Miami for 50 years and will appear before a jury of a federal court in the state of Florida.The man is marked as a participant in the shooting and author of several shots of “auction” on detainees who were injured at the Almirante Zar Naval Air Base. Bravo was in his 30s at the time.
The victims of the Trelew Massacre
He is accused of being the executioner of 19 political prisoners, belonging to different armed organizations such as the ERP and Montoneros, who in the early morning of August 22, 1972 escaped from a prison in Rawson. Other of the prisoners managed to get on a plane bound for Chile and escape, others were left to the fate of Bravo who tortured them and then executed several shots. Of the 19 he captured, 16 died and three managed to survive. Today he will be tried for such crimes. After committing the shootings, the man was assigned by the Argentine Navy to the embassy in the United States and became a citizen of that country since 1987. Over the years he left the military career and became a businessman by running a security company. The man was located and detained in the United States a decade ago, but he is not being prosecuted since the justice of that country denied the extradition of the sailor. In March of this year, Miami District Attorney Jason Wu ruled in favor of extradition. The prosecutor ruled out that it was the repression of an escape, but considered that they were extrajudicial executions and that, as such, “they cannot be considered an exception to the extradition treaty between the United States and Argentina.”
Roberto Guillermo Bravo Profile
The complaints against Bravo were filed in October 2020 by Raquel, daughter of the remembered militant Alberto Camps who after surviving the massacre told what happened to the journalist Francisco “Paco” Urondo.They also denounced Eduardo Capello, Alicia Krueger and Marcela Santucho by their relatives who were murdered in the Almirante Zar Naval Air Base during 1972, full dictatorship of Alejandro Agustín Lanusse.The Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) recalled that the prosecutor “also highlighted that the relatives of the victims of the Trelew massacre waited half their lives for justice and that Bravo evaded justice for all that time.” The United States is not a safe haven for those legally accused of mass murder abroad, and this Court should not protect Bravo from answering to his accusers any longer,” Wu said in announcing his decision.
The victims of the Trelew Massacre were Carlos Heriberto Astudillo, Rubén Pedro Bonet, Eduardo Adolfo Capello, Mario Alberto Delfino, Carlos Alberto Del Rey, Alfredo Elías Kohon, Clarisa Rosa Lea Place, Susana Graciela Lesgart, José Ricardo Mena, Miguel Ángel Polti, Mariano Pujadas, María Angélica Sabelli, Humberto Segundo Suárez, Humberto Adrián Toschi, Jorge Alejandro Ulla and Ana María Villarreal de Santucho.Bravo toured the dungeons executing with shots of grace those who were still Live. María Antonia Berger, Alberto Miguel Camps and Ricardo René Haidar survived, and revealed the names of the soldiers who murdered their comrades, among them, that of Bravo.Many point to this case as the most direct antecedent of state terrorism before the last civic-military dictatorship.
