Emilio Eduardo Massera
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E. E. Massera in the headlines, accused of genocide. |
Emilio Eduardo Massera (born
October 19,
1925,
Paraná,
Entre Ríos) is a former
Argentine military officer, and part of the
1976 coup d'état. In
1981, he was found to be a member of
P2 (also known as
Propaganda Due, a freemasonry lodge involved in Italy's
strategy of tension).
Massera entered Argentina's Naval Military School in 1942, obtaining his commission as a midshipman in 1946. During his career he occupied different positions within the Navy, including command of the sail training ship ARA
Libertad and command of the Sea Fleet in 1973. In 1974 Massera was promoted to the rank of full Admiral and became the Commander-in-Chief of the
Argentine Navy, after the government sent a number of senior admirals into forced retirement.
Between 1976 and 1978 Admiral Massera was part, together with
Jorge Rafael Videla and
Orlando Ramón Agosti, of the
military junta that deposed
President Isabel Martínez de Perón and ruled Argentina
de facto during the
National Reorganization Process. On September 1978 Massera stepped down from both the office of Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and from his seat in the Military Junta.
After the end of the dictatorship in 1983, he was
tried for
human rights violations and sentenced to
life imprisonment and the loss of his military grade. However, on
29 December 1990 he was
pardoned by then-President
Carlos Menem. Massera was free until 1998, when he was imprisoned again pending an investigation of several instances of kidnapping and suppresion of identity of minors during his term, as well as orders of torture, execution, confinement in illegal detention centers and drowning of prisoners.
In 2004 he suffered a
cerebrovascular accident caused by a burst
aneurysm, and he was admitted in the Military Hospital of Buenos Aires. Due to after-effects of the stroke, Eduardo Massera was declared legally unimputable because of
insanity on
17 March 2005, and the cases against him were suspended.
* This article draws material from
the corresponding article in the
:Spanish Wikipedia.
