Buenos Aires
Accused torturer faces trial: A former police officer accused of torture and crimes against humanity during Argentina’s military dictatorship era was extradited to Buenos Aires this week, after working for decades as an academic in France. Mario Sandoval— nicknamed “Churrasco” (“Barbecue”) for his alleged habit of electrocuting people on metal bed frames— fled to France after the junta fell in 1983 and lived openly under his own name. He became a professor of Latin American studies at the New Sorbonne University and worked as an adviser to former President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sandoval, 66, is suspected of links to the murders of hundreds of people, but the extradition charges relate to just one: the 1976 disappearance of architecture student Hernán Abriata. Sandoval says all the accusations against him are lies.