Former Infantry Intelligence chief Ernesto Villarruel, uncle of Vice President Victoria Villarruel, died on Tuesday at age 80. He was arrested and prosecuted in 2015 for his participation in the kidnapping and disappearance of a woman in 1977 but was later declared unable to stand trial due to health reasons.

Ernesto Guillermo Villarruel was a captain and head of intelligence for the Third Infantry Regiment of La Tablada, Buenos Aires Province. This regiment managed the clandestine detention center El Vesubio, one of the deadliest of the dictatorship era.

Villarruel was arrested during the 2015 elections when he went to vote and was prosecuted shortly after by Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas. He was 71 at the time.

On February 17, 1977, Villarruel ordered his Infantry regiment to raid the home of Mario Rubén Arrosagaray and Guillermina Silvia Vázquez under suspicion of “subversive” activities. The couple was part of the militant organization Montoneros. Arrosagaray managed to escape. Vázquez, on the other hand, was captured and seen for the last time at El Vesubio.

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Villarruel was prosecuted for ordering the operation that led to Vázquez’s illegal detention and disappearance. However, in December 2016, he was deemed unfit to stand trial due to health reasons and released from the psychiatric clinic where he served pre-trial detention during that time.

According to the court’s medical experts, he had Alzheimer’s disease and was unable to understand the charges.

Witnesses have also accused him of being involved in the “Monte Grande massacre,” in which a group of 16 El Vesubio detainees were transferred to a house and shot dead. The military set up the scene to make it look like a shootout in which they had overpowered the “subversive” group.

Victoria Villarruel has always been proud of her military family. A staunch public defender of the military, she founded the Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism and their Victims (Celtyv by its Spanish initials) in 2006 to seek reparations for those who died in actions carried out by guerrillas before and during the dictatorship.

She has admitted to visiting several military officers who were in jail or house arrest but explained she was just doing interviews for her 2009 book, They called them…the idealist youth about guerrilla fighters in the 1970s. 

Victoria often talks about her father, a Malvinas war veteran who participated in the military’s 1975 “Independence Operation” to eliminate guerrilla groups reportedly settling in rural areas of Tucumán. She thanks him and her grandfather for teaching her, “We had to fight for our values.” But she never mentions her uncle.

She is on an official visit to Spain and will continue her agenda as scheduled, a source close to her confirmed to the Herald.

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