Bolivia has extradited an Argentine former military officer accused of committing crimes against humanity during the right-wing dictatorship of 1976-1983.  Jorge Horacio Paez Senestrari is charged with kidnapping, torturing, or killing several politicians during the "dirty war", including one who survived and is now a provincial governor.

Paez was picked up in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on Friday, and President Evo Morales ordered him immediately deported back to Argentina, from which he went on the lam three years ago.  Paez was living in a rented apartment which he would leave for only an hour each night to pick up personal supplies.

“As a result of various control checks and surveillance project being conducted by specialist intelligence teams, an Argentine national, who was verified to be Jorge Horacio Páez Senestrari, was found,” said government minister Jorge Perez, who personally oversaw the deportation yesterday.

Bolivian Interior Minister Jorge Perez said Paez had “played a direct role in “Operation Condor”, the campaign of terror in which the fascist military governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay worked with the American CIA to eliminate their political opponents in the 1970s and ‘80s.  More than 60,000 people were “disappeared” in the archipelago of prisons and dungeons – and some were even dropped out of helicopters over the ocean.

Paez was convicted of aggravated murder and torture and sentenced to 25-years in prison, but was released in 2011 by an appeals court and promptly skipped out.