Suárez Masón, Carlos

(1924–2005)

   Also known as Pajarito (Birdie) and El Cacique (Chief). Argentine general and commander of the First Army Corps in Buenos Aires. He was a hard-liner during the repression and wanted the military to retain power indefinitely. As commander, he was responsible for dozens of secret detention centers in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas, where some 5,000 people were detained, tortured, and murdered. After the return to civilian rule, he fled to California to escape prosecution but was discovered in 1987 and extradited to Argentina, where he was put on trial for murder and kidnapping. In 1990, however, before his trial ended, he was pardoned, along with other generals, by President Carlos Saúl Menem. He faced trial again, in the late 1990s, for trafficking in babies born to political prisoners, a crime not covered by the earlier pardon. While awaiting trial, Suárez Masón, like other Argentine prisoners over 70, was held under house arrest. But after he violated this privilege by leaving his house in January 2005 to attend a party for his 80th birthday, he was rearrested and sent to prison. On 21 June 2005, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled the generals’ pardons unconstitutional, he died in a military hospital. By then he was awaiting trial not only for baby trafficking but also for kidnapping and murder. Although he escaped conviction in Argentina, Italian courts sentenced him in 2004 to life in prison in absentia for the murder of Italian-Argentinians.