Adolfo Scilingo

Adolfo Francisco Scilingo Manzorro (born July 28, 1946 in Bahía Blanca ) is an Argentine corvette captain and was involved in state terrorist activities as a naval officer during the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 . He is serving a long prison term in Spain.

Life

Former soldier Scilingo was outraged in 1995 that officers directing disappearances and death flights were being promoted, while two menial soldiers who pointed out their involvement in their promotion talks were not promoted. He therefore turned to the journalist Horacio Verbitsky , who conducted a series of interviews with him in which Scilingo admitted his involvement in so-called " death flights " (vuelos de la muerte), which were not yet known. The Argentine military had " disappeared " captured political opponents by throwing them alive from military aircraft into the Atlantic or the Río de la Plata . Scilingo described the death flights in detail. The prisoners were told that they were being sent to a prison in southern Argentina and that they would need a vaccination. However, this "vaccination" was a strong narcotic. The unconscious were then stripped naked and thrown alive into the sea from a height of several thousand meters.

A plane with ten to fifteen prisoners on board took off regularly every Wednesday. Around 2000 people are said to have been murdered in two years.

He admitted to Baltasar Garzón , an examining magistrate for the Audiencia Nacional de España , that he had been involved in two fatal flights. According to Fernando Mas, when Scilingo testified in front of Garzón, he made a strong claim that high-ranking naval officers were involved in the crimes.

During the military dictatorship, the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) (Naval Mechanics School) was a detention and torture center. Scilingo explained how ESMA worked as the navy's operations center in the fight against so-called subversion and thus as the center of what was later to be called the Dirty War .

On April 19, 2005, Scilingo was sentenced in Spain to 640 years in prison for crimes against humanity in 1976 and 1977.

In the trial, Scilingo was found responsible for the deaths of 30 people, as well as imprisonment and torture. In July 2007, the Spanish Supreme Court increased the sentence to 1,084 years after it was established that he had been involved in another 255 deprivations.

literature

• Horacio Verbitsky : The Flight. Confessions of an Argentinian Dirty Warrior. New Press, August 1996, ISBN 1-56584-009-7 (The book led to the uncovering of the fatal flights ; the underlying interviews were used as evidence in the criminal prosecution of Scilingos.)
• Confesion de Scilingo ante Horacio Verbitsky , reported in the book El vuelo . Planeta - Espejo de la Argentina Buenos Aires, 1995

See also

• Miguel Ángel Cavallo
• Desaparecidos

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fernando Mas De Nuremberg a Madrid, Historia íntima de un Juicio Grijalbo 1999. Página 105
2. ↑ Nizkor Juicio Oral en el caso del Capitán de Corbeta Adolfo Scilingo
3. ↑ Christiane Wolters: Ex-officer in court for "death flights". Deutsche Welle, January 14, 2005
4. ↑ 07mar05 - Acta de Juicio Oral (43ª Sesión) Clarin of April 20, 2005: El eBay for Scilingo fue condenado en Madrid a 640 años de cárcel
5. ↑ El País ( page no longer available , search in web archives: Adolfo Scilingo )
6. ^ Medical Refugee Aid Bonn eV Argentine military Adolfo Francisco Scilingo convicted in Spain
7. ↑ pagina12 of January 2, 2007 Adolfo Scilingo X Horacio Verbitsky