'Dirty war' officer sent back to Argentina

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Former Argentine officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo was put on a commercial flight to Argentina on Monday to face charges of human rights abuses, a police source told CNN.

Spain's National Court authorized two weeks ago the extradition of Cavallo, suspected of involvement in Argentina's "dirty war" under military juntas more than two decades ago.

A court spokeswoman at the time said it was just a matter of "days" before Interpol could arrange security and a flight from Spain to Argentina.

Cavallo left the Alcala-Meco prison, just east of Madrid, on Sunday afternoon under guard, a Spanish prison authority source told CNN.

On Monday, he was aboard a flight to Argentina, accompanied by Argentine police, a police source said. The source would not disclose which city Cavallo would be taken to or the time the plane would arrive for security purposes.

However, The Associated Press reported that Cavallo arrived at Buenos Aires' Ezeiza International Airport early Monday and was escorted by police to the federal court complex.

Cavallo, 56, has said that he is not guilty.

His Spanish lawyer, Fernando Pamos de la Hoz, told CNN on Sunday that he had received a call from a relative of another inmate at the Alcala-Meco prison, advising him that Cavallo had been taken out of the facility.

Pamos de la Hoz said he did not know whether his client was already en route to Buenos Aires, adding that he had not received any word from officials about his client.

Cavallo has sought to return to Argentina, arguing that Spain has no jurisdiction in his case, Pamos de la Hoz said.

But Cavallo, who has been in Spanish custody since 2003, is among dozens of former Argentine officers who have been targeted by the Spanish court's years-long investigation into rights abuses in Argentina during the former military governments. He was among a small number who were actually in Spanish custody.

Cavallo was a navy lieutenant at the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires, where many opponents of the Argentine right-wing military governments in the 1970s and 1980s disappeared or were killed, according to Spanish court documents and human rights groups.

"Of the 30,000 people who disappeared during the military dictatorship, some 5,000 of them were detained, at least for a time, at the Navy Mechanics School," according to a court document filed by the prosecution.

Cavallo was "fully integrated into the development of the plan of repression and extermination," the document says.

Human rights groups have identified the Navy Mechanics School as a prime detention and torture center under the former regime, which sought to neutralize its leftist opponents.

Spain has applied a legal principle called "universal justice," in which the court claims jurisdiction to try cases of human rights abuses committed elsewhere.

But in recent years Argentina has opened its own judicial proceedings into the alleged abuses, and since at least late 2006, Spain has been trying to extradite Cavallo to Argentina to face justice there.

The Spanish government approved the extradition of Cavallo earlier this year, and that was followed by the National Court ruling two weeks ago.

Still, lawyers for victims of human rights abuses in Argentina last week in Madrid announced at a news conference that they would fight to stop the extradition.

One of the lawyers, Carlos Slepoy, earlier told CNN that Cavallo would get a fairer, more serious and quicker trial in Spain than in Argentina.

But Cavallo's lawyer said it was unlikely that such appeals by victims groups would delay extradition. E-mail to a friend

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