Guerrilla turned over to Argentina

Press, 23 October 1984, Page 6

Guerrilla turned over to Argentina

NZPA-Reuter Buenos Aires A leader of Argentina’s disbanded Montoneros guerillas, Mario Firmenich, was extradited secretly from Brazil yesterday, said the semi-official news agency, Telam. He was flown to Argentina in a police jet and put in custody in Buenos Aires. The agency said that the operation had been kept

secret to protect him from possible assassination attempts. ' The Montoneros were one of two Leftist • guerrilla groups whose campaigns of violence against a succession of Governments, starting with the kidnapping and murder ? of a former President, Pedro Aramburu, in 1970, led to a brutal coun-ter-campaign by (he security forces in which thou-

sands disappeared. The group disbanded as a guerrilla organisation to form a political party after democracy was restored in Argentina last year. The Brazilian Federal Supreme Court agreed in June to an Argentinian request for Firmenich to be extradited for trial on charges of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and extortion. He was

arrested in February for overstaying a tourist visa. Clandestine Right-wing groups have threatened to kill Firmenich, aged 41. One group, the Argentine Nationalist Commandos, said that it would “execute him as soon as he steps foot on Argentine territory.” The President, Mr Raul Alfonsin, who came to power last December after

elections that returned Argentina to democracy, has ordered trials of guerrilla leaders and top figures in the military Governments that ruled from 1976 to 1983.

He said that for Argentina to .have a state of law it was necessary to try those ‘‘who, in our recent past, have sowed terror, pain and death across the breadth of Argentine society.”