Miguel Etchecolatz

Who is Miguel Etchecolatz?

Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz is a former senior Argentine police officer, who worked in the Buenos Aires Provincial Police during the first years of the military dictatorship of the 1970s. Etchecolatz was deeply involved in the "anti-subversion operation" known as the National Reorganization Process. He was first convicted in 1986 of crimes committed during this period, but passage that year of the Ley de Punto Final, which created amnesty for security officers, meant that he was released without a sentence. In 2003 Congress repealed the law, and the government re-opened prosecution of crimes during the Dirty War.

In 2004, Etchecolatz was one of the first two officials convicted and sentenced for baby snatching: taking a child from "disappeared" parents, passing it on for adoption by officials of the regime, and hiding the child's true identity. He and Jorge Berges were each sentenced to seven years.

For his actions in the Provincial Police during El proceso, in 2006 he was tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, on numerous charges of homicide, illegal deprivation of freedom, and torture.