Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz (b. 1929) is a former senior Argentine police officer, who worked in the Buenos Aires Provincial Police during the first years of the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006, on charges of homicide, illegal deprivation of freedom (kidnapping), and torture.

During the dictatorship
Etchecolatz was the Commissioner General of Police and the right-hand man of Police Chief Ramón Camps. He served as Director of Investigations of the provincial police from March 1976 until late 1977. During his period in office, Buenos Aires Province had the highest number of illegal detentions in the country. In particular, Etchecolatz was second in command during the Night of the Pencils, when several students were detained and then tortured and murdered.

Return to democracy
In 1983 democratic rule returned to Argentina. In 1986, Etchecolatz was sentenced to 23 years for illegal detention and forced disappearances, but was spared prison because of the "Pardon Laws" (the Ley de Punto Final and the Ley de Obediencia Debida), which halted and rolled back investigations of the crimes committed during the Dirty War. [2]

After being released, Etchecolatz wrote a book defending his actions during the dictatorship, called La otra campana del Nunca Más (a counter-reference to the Nunca Más report produced by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons). Jorge and Marcelo Gristelli, owners of a Catholic library and editorial house, presented the book in 1998 at the Buenos Aires Book Fair. Etchecolatz decided not to appear in public, because according to the Gristellis he "had received threats". In his book, the former police officer stated: "I never had, or thought to have, or was haunted by, any sense of blame. For having killed? I was the executor of a law made by man. I was the keeper of divine precepts. And I would do it again." In 2001, the Gristellis were seen guarding Etchecolatz as he came out of a court in Buenos Aires, and replied with fist and sticks to left-wing demonstrators who insulted Etchecolatz. [3]

Etchecolatz had to face civil trials outside the purview of the Pardon Laws (which was restricted to acts committed in the context of military or police procedure). In 2004 he was sentenced to seven years in prison for the abduction of a "disappeared" couple's child and the suppression of her identity. [4] He was originally imprisoned in Villa Devoto between 2004 and 2005, but was later allowed to continue the sentence under house arrest due to being over 70 years old. Although Etchecolatz's lawyers also claimed he had a terminal illness, in 2006 he was transferred to Marcos Paz Prison, since police found a firearm in his home, which violated the requirements for the benefit of house arrest. [5] [6]

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The 2006 trial
Etchecolatz was the first criminal of the Dirty War to be prosecuted since the repeal of the "Pardon Laws". Beginning in June 2006, he faced a high-profile trial for human rights abuses. On 19 September 2006 he was found guilty of the detention and torture of Jorge López and Nilda Eloy, and the homicides of Ambrosio Francisco De Marco, Patricia Graciela Dell'Orto, Diana Teruggi de Mariani, Elena Arce Sahores, Nora Livia Formiga and Margarita Delgado. He is believed to have operated, together with Camps, at least eight clandestine detention centres in La Plata, Quilmes, Banfield and Martínez. More than 100 witnesses were called, including former president Raúl Alfonsín (1983–1989), under whose administration the Pardon Laws were passed. [7] [8] [9] [10]

Although still claiming to be innocent during the trial, Etchecolatz did not refrain from justifying his actions. He criticized the procedures of the trial as biased, and the judges as obedient to other powers. He called himself "an old man who is ill, with no money and no power", and "a part of a war that we [won] with the arms and that we're losing politically." Furthermore, he refused to acknowledge the authority of the judges, telling them: "You are not the judge. The supreme judge awaits us after death. [...] It's not this tribunal that sentences me, it's you." He employed his last words before hearing the sentence to claim he was "a prisoner of war" and "a political prisoner".

The tribunal, besides passing the sentence, stated that Etchecolatz's crimes were "crimes against humanity in the context of the genocide that took place in Argentina". The term "genocide" was thus employed for the first time in the official treatment of Dirty War crimes, as requested by the accusers.