Published 10/22/2025 16:23
After 40 years of the military dictatorship in Uruguay (1973–1985), an agent from the authoritarian period will serve another life sentence for the crimes of kidnapping, torture and murder. Former marine and former military commander Jorge Néstor Troccoli, 78, was convicted in Italy for involvement in the deaths of three people. As an officer in the secret service of the Uruguayan Navy (Fusna), he was the link with Ocoa (anti-subversive operations coordination body).
The Third Court of Assisi of the Court of Rome handed down the decision this Tuesday (21). In addition to life imprisonment, the former officer will have to spend one year and six months in daytime isolation. All of the crimes attributed to Troccoli occurred within the scope of Operation Condor – the repression network that united the dictatorships of the Southern Cone to eliminate opponents of the regimes in the 1970s and 1980s. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay participated in the alliance.
Two of the three victims – the couple Raffaella Giuliana Filippazzi and Augustin Potenza – were persecuted by the government of Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner. According to Ansa, they “were kidnapped in Montevideo on May 27, 1977 while they were in a local hotel. After being arrested, they were handed over to the S2 Fusna unit, Navy riflemen led by Troccoli”, who murdered them. His remains were only found in 2016, in a mass grave in Asunción, capital of Paraguay.
The third victim described by the prosecution is that of Uruguayan teacher and member of the People’s Victory Party (PVP) Elena Quinteros, considered a missing politician. Kidnapped on June 24, 1976, the activist was taken to an illegal detention center in Montevideo, from where she managed to escape. However, when seeking refuge at the Uruguayan embassy on the 30th, she was arrested, tortured and killed by S2 Fusna in the diplomatic representation itself.
It is not the first conviction for Troccoli, who has been detained in Italy since July 2021. A Uruguayan by birth, he became a naturalized Italian and began living in the European country in 2007. Even without being extradited, the former commander was previously convicted of the disappearance and execution of around 20 people. Another 13 agents of the dictatorship were convicted.
To the website Opera MundiAlessia Merluzzi, representative of the Uruguayan State, said that the new conviction “makes up for lost time” and the “years of absence of justice”, by reaffirming “the importance of the human being, the need to protect the dignity that each body and each life must have”.
Source: vermelho.org.br
