Argentina holds man wanted by France for 1976 disappearance

Buenos Aires: A former Argentine military intelligence officer accused of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s has been arrested at a Buenos Aires hospital where he was being treated, judicial sources said Friday. 

Onetime colonel Jose Osvaldo "Balita" Ribeiro had been No. 2 in Argentina's Battalion 601, an army unit blamed for the disappearances of hundreds of opposition figures as part of the anti-Communist Operation Condor carried out in several South American countries.

He was tried in absentia in France in 2010 and sentenced to 35 years in prison in connection with the disappearance of a French-Chilean dual national, Jean-Yves Claudet. France had asked Argentina to arrest Ribeiro.

For now, Ribeiro remains hospitalized under police guard, diagnosed with senile dementia, according to hospital sources.

As part of Operation Condor, Ribeiro coordinated with the DINA secret police of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in detaining refugees in Argentina supporting opposition forces, according to lawyer Sophie Thonon-Wesfreid, who represents French citizens who disappeared under the Argentine dictatorship.

Ribeiro was accused by French judge Roger Leloire of being the mastermind, along with Chilean DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, of the "disappearance of Claudet on October 31, 1976." 

Many of those who "disappeared" at the time -- often left-wing activists, as well as trade unionists, journalists and students -- were in fact killed by military forces or right-wing death squads. 

Argentine courts have handed out prison sentences to more than 1,000 officials, military officers or agents of the dictatorship since the government of Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) repealed the country's amnesty laws.

From 1980 to 1985, Ribeiro was in Nicaragua to train the right-wing "contra" paramilitary fighters opposing the Sandinist revolution.

A French judge issued an extradition request for Ribeiro in 2001, but it was never carried out, according to Thonon-Wesfreid, who said it was now being dusted off to use again.