Home » Argentina: new extradition request for Don Reverberi, the parish priest accused of torture and crimes against humanity

Argentina: new extradition request for Don Reverberi, the parish priest accused of torture and crimes against humanity

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A new extradition request arrives from Argentina for Don Franco Reverberi, the Italo-Argentine parish priest accused of crimes against humanity and torture who officiates mass in Sorbolo, a small town in the province of Parma. The priest, who has lived in Italy since 2011, had already been at the center of an extradition request, denied by the Bologna Court of Appeal on 20 October 2013. The federal court of San Rafael, which issued the new request, has the accusations against Reverberi were widened for concurrence in murder, imposition of torture and deprivation of liberty. The crimes of which the priest is accused date back to the 1970s, times marked by ferocious South American regimes which led, in Argentina alone, to the disappearance and elimination of over 30 thousand political opponents: the disappeared, men and women who were kidnapped and made to disappear in hundreds of clandestine torture and extermination centers.

The fugitives

by Carlo Bonini (editorial coordination), Elena Basso, Marco Mastrandrea, Alfredo Sprovieri. Multimedia coordination by Luciano Nigro. Graphics and videos by Gedi Visual


Don Reverberi, for over 40 years, lived and worked as a parish priest in San Rafael, an Argentine city south of Mendoza, where, during the years of the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, a clandestine center for torture and extermination had been created, the “Casa Departamental “, the only one of 340 in Argentina inside a court. Dozens of people were detained, tortured and killed in San Rafael. A maxi-trial was held in August 2010 to try the perpetrators of those crimes. Don Franco Reverberi, during the years of the dictatorship, was a military chaplain of the army of that city and was called to testify as a person informed of the facts. However, something unexpected happened: during the trial, four witnesses said that while they were being tortured, the military chaplain was present, whom they identified as Don Reverberi. He was the pastor of their city and they knew him well before they were detained. They said that Don Franco wore military clothes and witnessed the beatings with the Bible in his hand, inviting the tortured to cooperate. Four other former political prisoners testified against Reverberi: Mario Bracamonte, Sergio Chaqui, Roberto Rolando Flores Tobio and Enzo Bello Crocefisso. The soldiers assigned to the clandestine centers had received special training in torture techniques: prisoners were raped, beaten to death, hung on the walls, tortured with electricity. There were hundreds of clandestine centers and officially they did not exist, because everything that happened within those walls had to remain secret. Those who survived remained locked up for years, or were loaded onto a plane to be thrown into the sea with the “flights of death” and made to disappear.

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Reverberi in 2010 declared himself innocent and completely unrelated to the facts but the Argentine authorities continued to investigate and on June 14, 2011, federal prosecutor José Maldonado summoned him with a subpoena. On 10 May 2011, however, the parish priest had flown to Italy and, providing medical records that attested to heart problems, he declared that he was unable to travel to attend the trial that had opened against him. Reveberi, an Italian-Argentine citizen, had left Sorbolo – a small town of 9 thousand inhabitants – at the age of 11 with his family to emigrate to Argentina. Well received and loved by the community, he led a quiet and secluded life, until in 2012 his mugshot appeared on the Interpol website which was looking for him for crimes against humanity and torture. Today, eight years after the refusal of the extradition request, the case is reopened and there is new hope for the witnesses who, after 40 years, continue to ask for justice. Among these Mario Bracamonte who in 1976, when he was only 28 years old, was kidnapped in the clandestine center of San Rafael. Mario survived and stated that during an endless torture session, which lasted hours and hours, while the floor was covered with the blood of the detainees, he recognized Don Franco among those observing. “I don’t even care that Reverberi goes to jail – Mario said – I just want him to answer the questions. If he participated in our tortures, he was certainly present even when they made the bodies of the dead disappear. I just want him to tell me where they are. my missing comrades, I ask no more. I want you to answer the questions in order to find the comrades who today can no longer be here with us “.

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