Emilio Massera

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Emilio Massera

Emilio Eduardo Massera Padula (born October 19, 1925 in Paraná , † November 8, 2010 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine admiral and from 1976 to 1978 one of the leading members of the Argentine military junta . He is considered to be one of the main people responsible for the operational implementation of the massive human rights violations during the military rule, which killed up to 30,000 people.

Military advancement

Massera entered naval school at the age of 17. He then studied at the US Military Academy School of the Americas and the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC. After returning to Argentina, he quickly made a career in the military hierarchy. In 1974 President Juan Domingo Peron made him an admiral.

Massera was from March 24, 1976 to September 16, 1978 member of the military junta together with Jorge Videla and Orlando Agosti .

worldview

He appealed to the militant defense of conservative “Christian values” and was one of the leading advocates of the “ dirty war ” based on the French model . With the help of mostly civilian military and secret service employees, the dictatorship kidnapped and murdered the members and sympathizers of the guerrilla groups Montoneros and ERP as well as a large number of bystanders. It destroyed the left, revolutionary wing of the traditional Peronist movement . The persecution later spread to almost all political dissidents . In 1977 the admiral declared:

“The current crisis of mankind is owed to three men: at the end of the 19th century Marx published the three volumes of his Capital and with them sowed doubts about the inviolability of property; At the beginning of the 20th century, the sacred intimate sphere of man was attacked by Freud with his book The Interpretation of Dreams , and finally Einstein in 1905 with his theory of relativity undermined the static conception of matter and its decline. "

- Emilio Massera : La Opinión on November 25, 1977

All three were Jews , whose destructive work would have plunged the world into the current chaos.

Importance in the junta

The main portal of ESMA, where around 5000 people were tortured and murdered during the dictatorship. It was part of Massera's area of ​​command.

Massera was in command of the Navy and in this capacity was also responsible for the notorious Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) naval school , one of the centers of illegal detention. Around 5,000 people were tortured and murdered there, including foreigners. A total of up to 30,000 opponents of the military dictatorship died during the junta's rule from 1976 to 1983.

Massera met several times with the then head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, today's Pope Francis , who may have been involved in the arrest of two Jesuits and their imprisonment at ESMA, see The Jalics and Yorio case .

Massera was also the junta's networker. With the help of Licio Gelli , a former liaison officer of Mussolini , he became a member of the conspiratorial, later banned Italian Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2). He succeeded in circumventing the US arms embargo and in preparation for the Falklands War to procure military equipment and armaments for the junta worth 6 billion US dollars abroad. There is the theory that in 1978 he organized a secret meeting with Mario Firmenich , the exile leader of the Montoneros guerrilla group, which was opposed by the dictatorship, in the Argentine embassy in Paris, with the aim of swearing into a “Catholic national alliance”. Some contemporary witnesses explain the complete collapse of the Montoneros' counter-offensive planned for the Football World Cup in 1978 and their immediate arrest before they crossed the border to Argentina. The only witness to these meetings, the embassy employee Elena Holmberg , was recalled to Buenos Aires, kidnapped on December 20, 1978 and found dead a few days later in the city's harbor basin.

1979 Massera was replaced in his position in the junta by the Admiral Armando Lambruschini .

Law Enforcement, Illness and Death

After the end of the dictatorship, based on the contacts he had established, he tried his hand at being a democratic candidate for the presidency, but was sentenced to life imprisonment and loss of military rank in 1985 for murder, torture, deprivation of liberty and robbery . At the end of 1990 he was pardoned by President Carlos Menem in favor of members of the military government as part of the amnesty . In 1998 he was charged and arrested again on charges of robbing babies of abducted opponents of the regime . This offense was not covered by the 1990 amnesty. The detention was later replaced by house arrest.

In 2005 Massera suffered a brain aneurysm and has since been unable to stand trial. This saved him from further legal prosecution when the Menem's general amnesty was annulled by the Argentine Supreme Court in 2007. In addition to the proceedings in Argentina, extradition requests from Spain, France, Germany and Italy were pending; these countries accused him of being responsible for the kidnapping and murder of nationals while serving in the military government.

Emilio Massera died of a cerebral hemorrhage in the Naval Hospital in Buenos Aires.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary at La Nación
  2. ↑ a b c d Christine Legrand: Emilio Massera . Le Monde , November 12, 2010, p. 23
  3. ↑ FAZ, “ The admiral Eduardo Massera, who developed the navy into an all-powerful repression apparatus and turned its“ mechanical school ”in Buenos Aires (Esma) into the largest secret torture center, presumably surpassed him in cruelty. “From The Ideologe of the Dirty War , May 18, 2013
  4. ↑ See Michael Riekenberg , Kleine Geschichte Argentiniens , CH Beck: München 2009, p. 174.
  5. ↑ Horacio Verbitsky (Pagina / 12, March 17, 2013): Cambio de piel
  6. ^ Francesco Jalics: Ejercicios de contemplación: introducción a la forma de vida contemplativa ya la invocación a Jesús. San Pablo, 2003, ISBN 950-861-191-X , pp. 140ff; quoted by Horacio Verbitsky: Doble juego: la Argentina católica y militar. Editorial Sudamericana, 2006, ISBN 950-07-2737-4 , p. 73, and according to Hilda Marchiori: Victimologia / Victimology , 2008, ISBN 987-1432-10-0 , p. 108. According to note 42, ibid., Are missing this information in the Argentine edition of the book by Jalics. - See also Daily Mail.uk, March 17, 2013: Special report: The damning documents that show new Pope DID betray tortured priests to the junta
  7. ↑ Horacio Verbitsky (Pagina / 12, November 9, 2010): El Infierno es poco - El almirante y el cardenal
  8. ^ The Independant: Emilio Massera: Naval officer who took part in the 1976 coup in Argentina and was later jailed for his part in the junta's crimes of November 10, 2010. Retrieved March 14, 2013
  9. ^ Daniel Santoro: Comienzan a revelarse secretos del Batallón de Inteligencia 601 , Clarín of January 22, 2010. Accessed March 14, 2013
  10. ↑ Jorge Camarasa: Por qué asesinaron a Elena Holmberg en 1978 La Nación of February 22, 2001. Retrieved on March 14, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Massera, Emilio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Massera Padula, Emilio Eduardo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine military officer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Paraná (Entre Ríos)
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 2010
Place of death Buenos Aires