Condor Plan: a Uruguayan repressor would take refuge in Brazilian citizenship so as not to be extradited to Italy

From Rome

After various news confirming that the Uruguayan colonel, Pedro Antonio Mato Narbondo, sentenced in Italy to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in the context of the Condor Plan, lives in complete freedom in Brazil, many wonder what measures the Italian justice will take to enforce the sentence accordingly. The relatives of the disappeared attributed to Mato Narbondo and the other 13 convicted (3 Chileans and 11 Uruguayans) by the Italian Supreme Court insist on this fact. The ruling, dated July 9, in turn confirmed the convictions of the 2019 Court of Appeals. Eight of the convicted Uruguayans operated in the Automotores Orletti clandestine detention center in Buenos Aires.

Those convicted are credited with the total disappearance and death of 23 Latin American citizens (although each has been convicted of only some of these cases): four Chileans kidnapped in Chile, thirteen Uruguayans kidnapped in Argentina and six Argentines kidnapped in Argentina, Bolivia , Paraguay and Brazil. To these must be added another 20 Uruguayans kidnapped in Argentina but whose disappearance is attributed to only one of the defendants, Jorge Néstor Troccoli, also among those convicted, who was a member of the intelligence service of the Uruguayan military navy (FUSNA). Troccoli lived in Italy in freedom and was the only accused who attended some sessions of the trial. But the day after the sentence he was arrested and is in jail serving his sentence.

Mato Narbondo, who will turn 80 in September, escaped from Uruguay in 2013, escaping from Uruguayan justice that was going to prosecute him for the murder of a militant from the Broad Front in 1972, Luis Batalla. Mato Narbondo went to live in Santana do Livramento, a city in Brazil very close to the northern border of Uruguay and which is called Rivera on the Uruguayan side. In Rivera, it seems that he personally processed several times, without anyone denouncing him, the “certificate of existence” that he had to present to the Uruguayan Armed Forces Pension service so that they could continue depositing his retirement in a checking account. Since 2003 Mato Narbondo is Brazilian . Since his mother was and his wife was too, it was easy for him to get the new citizenship. And according to Brazilian law, as a citizen of that country he apparently could not be extradited.

According to several articles published by the Uruguayan newspapers La Diaria and Brecha, among others, Mato Narbondo is one of the few convicts in Italy, if not the only one, who lives in complete freedom, a quiet life in Santana do Livramento. He would have been helped several times even by consular representatives of Uruguay to manage the certificates of his existence, without ever being denounced. He is being defended in Brazil by the lawyer Julio Favero who also defended another torturer who had escaped from Uruguay, Colonel Manuel Cordero. Except that Cordero was extradited to Argentina, after living 6 years in Brazil, and he was convicted in 2016.

Mato Narbondo's journey in Italian justice

Already in the third line of the original text of the judgment of the Italian Court of Appeals, pronounced on July 8, 2019 (in reform of the first instance judgment of January 17, 2017), the name of Mato Narbondo appears with those of the other convicts. All were declared "responsible for the crime of multi-aggravated and continued voluntary homicide" and sentenced to life imprisonment and payment of the procedural expenses of the first two instances of the trial. Mato Narbondo is also sentenced to daytime isolation for two years. The Supreme Court, two years later, confirmed the life sentence, although not all the grounds for this sentence are yet known, which the Court will announce in the coming months.

The trial of the Condor Plan military was possible in Italy, not only because of the insistence and patience of the relatives of the disappeared of Italian origin, but also because in Italy it is possible to prosecute in absentia, that is, even if the person is not present. But then it is up to the Italian justice to take many other measures to ensure that those sentences are applied. Among these, it is possible to request extradition to the countries where the convicted person resides or from which he originates, so that he may serve his sentence in Italy. But it can also ask the countries where the condemned are located and whose citizenship they possess, to prosecute them themselves, as Italy did with the Italian-Uruguayan Jorge Néstor Troccoli who escaped to Italy in 2007 because he had an Italian passport and is now in the jail serving his life sentence.

But the first step in this whole journey for the application of a sentence to a character who is absent, is to report the case to Interpol, the international police that should arrest the condemned person wherever he was. Apparently Interpol received complaints from both Uruguay and Italy but never located the fugitive.

The other point to clarify is whether Brazil recognizes that crimes against humanity, such as those of Mato Narbondo, do not prescribe, regardless of the time that has passed, as stated in the 1970 United Nations convention.

Four of the victims for whom the Condor trial was carried out in Rome are attributed to Mato Narbondo: Uruguayans Bernardo Arnone, Gerardo Gatti, Juan Pablo Recagno and María Emilia Islas de Zaffaroni. All members of the Party for the Victory of the People who were kidnapped in Buenos Aires in September and October 1976, the year the last Argentine dictatorship began.

Cristina Mihura, Arnone's widow with whom she was living in Buenos Aires when he was kidnapped, and who has lived in Italy for a long time, has fought for several decades with other relatives to carry out the trial against the Plan Condor repressors. 22 years ago the investigations of the Italian justice began that concluded with the convictions last July.

But the battle for her and the relatives of the other three disappeared due to the fulfillment of Mato Narbondo's sentence has not ended. Speaking to Pagina I12 , Mihura said that she still has no news of an eventual request for extradition to Brazil from the Italian justice system. “We are in full summer break and we will have to wait until September. In any case, although Mato Narbondo also has Brazilian citizenship, it does not seem that this could be a sufficient reason for Brazil to deny his extradition to Italy. Because it is no longer a question of judging him, but rather of serving a definitive sentence that in Italy has been confirmed even by the Supreme Court. I find it strange that Brazil protects its citizens even when they were sentenced in other countries with all the guarantees”, she indicated.

Bolsonaro

“I fear that it will be a long procedure, which to a certain extent favors us, since the final decision in Brazil on extraditions depends on the President of the Republic and the support of current President Jair Bolsonaro for ferocious unpunished torturers is in the public domain, as was the case with Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra (died in 2015 but whom Bolsonaro defined as a national hero). We will have to wait for a new president in Brazil. But in the meantime, I am counting on the Italian judicial authority and the Italian government to start the extradition process, which is essential”, he concluded.

The idea that perhaps the most convenient thing is to wait for the change of government in Brazil (the presidential elections are scheduled for 2022) is also shared by several of the people who have been in charge of carrying out the Condor process in Rome. However, it is possible that in the month of September, when the country begins to function again after the August holidays, there will be something new.