In Historic Move, Mexico Orders Extradition in Genocide Case

Mexico on Friday ordered the extradition to Spain of a former Argentine navy officer accused of terrorism, genocide and torture, a ruling hailed by rights groups as a groundbreaking advance in international human rights law.

Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda granted the extradition less than a month after a federal judge recommended that Ricardo Miguel Cavallo be sent to Spain to face trial for crimes allegedly committed during Argentina’s “dirty war” against leftist rebels in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Rights groups said they believe that the Mexican decision marked the first time a country has agreed to extradite a foreigner detained on its soil to a third country seeking to try the person for human rights offenses. The ruling in effect means that a new web of international treaties against terrorism, genocide and torture exposes suspected rights abusers to extradition anywhere in the world.

The Cavallo case was a major first test for the 2-month-old government of President Vicente Fox, who won power from a long-dominant party on a platform of ending impunity and strengthening the rule of law.

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who also led the attempt to extradite former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet from Britain, named Cavallo in an indictment of 98 Argentines accused of involvement in the killings and torture of Spanish citizens during the dirty war.

Britain ultimately sent Pinochet home on health grounds last March rather than agree to his extradition. Pinochet spent 16 months under house arrest in Britain and now is facing further attempts to prosecute him in Chile.

“This is an extraordinary precedent in many ways,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Americas. “Taking into account that these atrocities that are attributed to Mr. Cavallo were committed more than 20 years ago, in a different country, and were never subject to criminal prosecution, this strengthens the principle in international human rights law of universal jurisdiction for human rights violations.”

Vivanco called Castaneda’s decision “a dramatic landmark for Mexican foreign policy. It is a clear break with the past, when Mexican foreign policy used to show no interest whatsoever in international cooperation in the fight against impunity for human rights violations.”

Castaneda offered no explanation for his decision. Lawyers for Cavallo said earlier in the day that they would appeal if the order went against their client. Typically, such appeals can hold up the actual extradition for a year or more.

The Argentine government has taken a low-key approach to the Cavallo case in recent months. A spokesman for President Fernando de la Rua said Jan. 17 that “the Argentine government is not a part of [the process] and will not interfere. The only thing the Argentine government has done up until now is give consular assistance.”

Last year, a former Argentine army major arrested in Rome on similar grounds was released after Italian courts rejected an extradition request.

Cavallo came to Mexico from Argentina in 1999 under apparently innocent circumstances, heading the management team of a new nationwide car registration program intended to reduce vehicle theft.

In August, Reforma newspaper splashed the news that Cavallo was believed to have been part of the notorious team of Argentine torturers during the dirty war.

Cavallo was detained by Mexican police at Cancun’s airport Aug. 24 when his flight to Argentina made a refueling stop as he apparently tried to flee the country. That set in motion the lengthy extradition process.

Mexican federal Judge Jesus Guadalupe Luna’s ruling Jan. 12 that Cavallo should be extradited to Spain to face charges was hailed by human rights activists as a critical precedent in international rights law.

Rights organizations said they knew of no other ruling in favor of sending a suspected rights violator to a third country based on international treaties against genocide and terrorism.

Judge Luna held that Mexico’s extradition treaty with Spain is a valid legal basis for the case and that Mexico’s signature on conventions against genocide and terrorism, as well as laws in Mexico against those crimes, justifies the extradition.

Cavallo’s lawyers had argued that Mexico’s constitution protected Cavallo from persecution by a third country and that laws could not be applied retroactively. Just before his arrest, Cavallo acknowledged having served in his country’s armed forces but said he had not committed any crimes.

Castaneda’s ruling went beyond Judge Luna’s decision by adding torture to the charges for which Cavallo may be tried in Spain. Luna had approved extradition on charges of genocide and terrorism, but had excluded torture, the third original charge brought by Garzon.

Roberto Garreton, a celebrated Chilean human rights activist who was in Mexico for the ruling, said the addition of torture was critical “because it sustains the argument that torture is a crime against humanity.”

“Castaneda’s decision reinforces the universal jurisdiction of human rights offenses,” Garreton said.

“The international reach of this ruling increases and reinforces the hope that one day political killings, extermination for political reasons and torture will be eradicated,” Garreton said. “It will be very clear now that torturers can be followed. It will make torturers think 10 times before torturing.”

If Cavallo had managed to flee to Argentina, he almost certainly would have been covered by the broad amnesties granted by civilian Argentine governments in the 1980s and ‘90s in attempts to avoid further tensions with the powerful military.

After Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983, an investigative commission found that at least 9,000 people had been abducted and killed during the junta’s offensive against leftists. Many of them disappeared from the Navy School of Mechanics, where Cavallo allegedly served and was known by prisoners as “Serpico,” or Marcelo.

Before the Cavallo decision was announced Friday, veteran human rights activist Sergio Aguayo urged Castaneda to approve the extradition “because it is of basic justice that torturers and murderers be punished for what they did.”

Approving the extradition, Aguayo wrote in a column in Reforma, “would put our country in the vanguard of international humanitarian law.”

Aguayo noted that Fox has promised to deal with Mexico’s own legacy of human rights violations of the past several decades, including the cases of several hundred leftists who disappeared, allegedly in custody of security forces.

“If Jorge Castaneda backs the decision taken by the Mexican judge,” he wrote, “he will show fidelity to his progressive ideas, he will distance himself from the hypocrisy that characterized on repeated occasions Mexican foreign policy, and he will show the seriousness of the promises made to us by the government of Vicente Fox.”

Vanessa Petit in The Times’ Buenos Aires Bureau contributed to this report.