Alfredo Astiz

Alfredo Astiz

Alfredo Ignacio Astiz (born 8 November 1951) was a Captain, intelligence officer and maritime commando in the Argentine Navy during the dictatorial rule of Jorge Rafael Videla in the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976–1983). He was known as El Ángel Rubio de la Muerte (the "Blond Angel of Death").

He was a member of GT332 (Task Force 332) based in the Naval Mechanics School (ESMA) in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War of the late 1970s. GT332 was involved in the deaths of many of the 9,000 to 30,000 victims of forced disappearance during this period, and ESMA became a secret concentration camp where as many as five thousand political prisoners were held, tortured and murdered.

Astiz, a specialist in the infiltration of human rights NGOs, was charged in 1976 with the kidnapping of Azucena Villaflor, the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. He surrendered to British forces at the beginning of the 1982 Falklands War, and although he was wanted by Sweden and France for the forced disappearances in 1977 of Dagmar Ingrid Hagelin, a 17-year old, Argentine-born girl holding Swedish citizenship, and of two French nuns, Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, he was repatriated to Argentina. A French court convicted him in absentia to a life sentence in 1990.

After the Argentine Supreme Court's 2003 decision that the amnesty implemented during the transition to democracy (Ley de Obediencia Debida and Ley de Punto Final) was unconstitutional, legal action against Astiz was renewed and he was given a life sentence by the supreme court on 26 October 2011.