Mario Sandoval charged with dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina – so how could he have worked undetected at a top French university?

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Mario Sandoval had been living in France for 14 years when he became a lecturer at the Institute of Latin American Studies (IHEAL) at the Sorbonne in Paris.

The Argentinian security specialist was in his mid-40s, spoke good French and had recently obtained French citizenship. His credentials were impeccable – he’d spent the previous five years teaching international relations at another Paris institute, the Université Marne-la-Vallée – and he soon became a valued asset at the Sorbonne.

During his six years at the illustrious university, from 1999 to 2005, Sandoval regularly volunteered to screen student applicants and organized numerous seminars, bringing in outside experts to speak to his students.

“He had an uncanny capacity to blend in. He would roll up his sleeves and get straight to work,” said Carlos Quenan, a fellow Argentinian academic at the Sorbonne. “I never received any particular complaint from staff or students about him.”

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What Quenan and his colleagues at the Sorbonne did not know was that before arriving in France in 1985, Sandoval had allegedly been a notorious police torturer during Argentina’s military dictatorship.

Last Sunday, that past caught up with him: on Sunday, Sandoval, 66, was extradited to Argentina to face trial over the 1976 disappearance of Hernán Abriata, an architecture student whose body has never been found.

About 30,000 people died at the hands of Argentina’s military, which targeted armed leftists but also non-violent opponents including journalists, intellectuals and human rights activists. Many were thrown drugged but still alive into the sea.

In the dungeons of the regime, Sandoval was allegedly known as “Churrasco” – a play on words referring not only to his good looks (“churro” is Argentinian slang for handsome) but also to his alleged skill with an electric cattle prod (a “churrasco” is a barbecued steak).

Political prisoners were routinely strapped to a metal bed frame and electrocuted in the basement of infamous navy mechanics school (Esma) in Buenos Aires, where Sandoval allegedly served – and where 5,000 people were tortured and killed.

One of those victims is believed to be Abriata.

At about 2pm on on 30 October 1976, a police officer escorted by soldiers arrived at the home of Abriata’s parents, identifying himself as “Sandoval, from Federal Coordination” (a police unit linked to kidnappings and murder).

As Abriata was led away, “Sandoval took my husband’s watch and handed it to me,” his widow Mónica Dittmar told the press this week. “‘To show you we don’t steal anything,’ he said.”

Abriata was never seen again, but at some point before his death, he managed to scrawl a message on a wall of his Esma cell: “H.A. Mónica, I love you.”

The message was discovered many years later, after the return of democracy, and Dittmar testified that she recognized her husband’s handwriting.

Sandoval’s alleged role during the military regime was first revealed in an

2007 article in Le Monde Diplomatique in 2007, two years after he left IHEAL.

But the episode has left Sorbonne Nouvelle under a cloud: how could an alleged torturer have worked undetected at the a Latin American studies institute of a major French university?

Sandoval’s annually renewed contract was originally signed by the then head of the IHEAL, Jean-Michel Blanquer – now France’s education minister. Blanquer has denied being aware of Sandoval’s alleged role during the dictatorship.

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“This is severely traumatizing for us as an institution,” says Olivier Compagnon, a contemporary history professor at the IHEAL, in a phone interview from Paris.

Compagnon first met Sandoval in 2003, when the two academics taught a course together on Venezuela. “We met at a bar in Paris and very quickly we had a disagreement. He was very rightwing, very reactionary, but I didn’t suspect anything deeper than that,” he said.

Compagnon never overcame his initial dislike of Sandoval, and refused to share another course with Sandoval the following year.

In 2005 Sandoval’s contract at the Sorbonne was not renewed. “It wasn’t because we suspected anything,” said Quenan. “We were just unhappy with the kind of classes he wanted to give, about armaments, security and other subjects that we didn’t deem relevant for our students.”

The IHEAL is conducting an investigation to determine how Sandoval managed to become an external lecturer, and in a statement said that staff were “very pleased” that he would face justice.