Ex-officer accused of human rights crimes in Argentina found living in Berlin
A former naval officer, charged with human rights crimes during Argentina’s bloody 1976-83 dictatorship, has been discovered living in Berlin – despite being the subject of an international arrest warrant.
Luis Esteban Kyburg, the alleged commander of an elite navy unit believed responsible for the deaths of at least 150 people, was filmed by the Bild tabloidwalking down the streets of Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain district .
“I’m waiting here. Court in Germany, not in Argentina. I’m waiting, innocent, calmly,” Kyburg is seen telling a Bild reporter in the video.
Kyburg, who has dual ArgentinianGerman citizenship, escaped to Berlin in 2013, after fellow members of the military task force he belonged to were convicted in Argentina.
About 30,000 people are believed to have been murdered by Argentina’s dictatorship, which set up Nazi-style death camps where its victims were tortured and then killed, many of them thrown alive from military planes into the South Atlantic.
Anahí Marocchi, the sister of one of Kyburg’s alleged victims, called for Germany to bring him to justice.
“I came to Germany seeking justice for my brother,” said Marocchi in a video posted on Friday by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), a Berlin-based human rights organization. “In Argentina, Luis
Kyburg, who shares responsibility for my brother’s murder, would have been convicted long ago. I have hope that the German justice system will now ensure he will be justly punished for his crimes.”
Her brother, Omar Marocchi, is thought to have been killed in 1976 in the city of Mar del Plata by a naval unit whose deputy commander at the time was Kyburg. The young activist disappeared together with his partner Susana Valor, who was three months pregnant.
Pregnant women were often kept alive until they gave birth, then murdered, and their child handed over to a military family to raise as their own.
Valor’s child is on the list of grandchildren being sought by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, an organization of women who have so far located 130 of their grandchildren.
“Luis K’s German citizenship must not shield him from prosecution,” said the ECCHR general secretary, Wolfgang Kaleck, in a statement.
“As the commander of an elite combat swimmer unit, he is believed to have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of 152 people during the military dictatorship in Argentina,” said ECCHR.
The discovery of Kyburg’s presence in Berlin follows the case of another alleged Argentinian torturer, Mario Sandoval, who was discovered to have worked as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, before he was detected in December and extradited to Argentina.
Kyburg’s flight to Germany offers a mirror image of the escape to Argentina of a large number of Nazis after the second world war, including Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann.