Adolfo Scilingo (born 28 July 1946 in Bahía Blanca) is a former

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish ( masculine) or ( feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines ...

naval officer who is serving 30 years (the legally applied limit, although he was sentenced to 640 years) in a Spanish prison after being convicted on 19 April 2005 for crimes against humanity, including extra-judicial

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

Charges

Scilingo was charged under Spain's

universal jurisdiction Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to claim criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where the alleged crime was committed, and regardless of the accused's nationality, ...

laws by investigating

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a ''magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judici ...

Baltazar Garzón with genocide, 30 counts of murder, 93 of causing injury, 255 of terrorism and 286 of torture. He denied the charges but initially refused to plead, claiming to be unwell. In 2005 doctors ruled Scilingo was fit to stand trial. The murder charges related to 30 drugged political prisoners thrown out of government jets during

Leopoldo Galtieri Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri (; 15 July 1926 12 January 2003) was an Argentine general and politician of Italian descent who served as President of Argentina from December 1981 to June 1982. Galtieri ruled as a military dictator during the Na ...

military junta A military junta () is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in ...

's Dirty War against leftist insurgents between 1976 and 1983. Scilingo had earlier attracted great notoriety for publicly confessing to journalist Horacio Verbitsky in c. 1996, to participating in the so-called

death flights Death flights ( es, vuelos de la muerte, links=no) are a form of extrajudicial killing practiced by military forces in possession of aircraft: victims are dropped to their death from airplanes or helicopters into oceans, large rivers or even mount ...

, the first of a series of public confessions collectively called in Argentina the 'Scilingo effect' (Feitlowitz 1999). Scilingo was serving a jail term for

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compen ...

in Argentina at the time.

Judgement

The court found Scilingo guilty of crimes against humanity and

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...

and sentenced him to 640 years in jail. 21 years for each for the murder of 30 victims, who were thrown from planes to their deaths, and a further five years for torture and five years illegal detention.Staff
'Dirty war' officer found guilty
BBC, 19 April 2005. Scilingo is unlikely to serve more than 30 years in jail as that is the maximum time a person can serve for non-terrorist offences. The Spanish case was the first use of a new Spanish law whereby people can be prosecuted for crimes committed outside Spain. Scilingo's confession prompted Argentines residing in Spain to press charges against him. It also led to Chileans living in Spain to file charges against their former dictator,

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

, who was later arrested in Britain at the request of Judge Baltasar Garzón. On 4 July 2007, the

Supreme Court of Spain The Supreme Court ('', TS'') is the highest court in the Kingdom of Spain. Originally established pursuant to Title V of the Constitution of 1812 to replace —in all matters that affected justice— the System of Councils, and currently regul ...

increased Scilingo's prison sentence to 1084 years (but effective for only 25 years) and altered the conviction to the specific penalties provided in the current criminal code for the crimes of murder and unlawful detention, but held that these crimes "constitute crimes against humanity according to international law".staff
Adolfo Scilingo

, 7 July 2007

Charges

Judgement

References

Further reading