Retired Argentine army major detained in disappearance of young French woman in 1976 [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Source: L. A. Times

Retired Argentine army major detained in disappearance of young French woman in 1976
By MAYRA PERTOSSI, Associated Press Writer
7:49 PM PST, November 3, 2008

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) _ Argentine police on Monday detained a retired army major accused in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of a young French woman in 1976, during the nation's military dictatorship.

Jorge Antonio Olivera was detained on the street in Vicente Lopez, a northern Buenos Aires suburb, by federal police, according to a news release published Monday by the Human Rights Secretariat.
Olivera is accused in the "forced disappearance, kidnapping and torture" of French-Argentine citizen Marianne Erize on Oct. 15, 1976, when Olivera was a lieutenant in the 22nd Mountain Infantry Regiment, the secretariat said.

Erize was 22 when she disappeared, and although she wasn't politically active, she did volunteer at a parish church with leftist liberation theology priest Carlos Mugica, who was killed by ultra-right groups in May 1974.

After fleeing Buenos Aires following the priest's death, Erize was seized in the province of San Juan. Her body was never found.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-lt-argentina-dirty-war,1,2560906.story

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The tortured, murdered "leftist," Marianne Erize