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Guillermo Suarez Mason
Topics: Argentine military personnel
Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason was an Argentine military convicted for Dirty War crimes during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. He was in charge of the Batallon de Inteligencia 601.
His political experience started in his twenties. He watched and learned from his political allies and opponents, gearing his social life to furthering his political ambitions. A magnetic and charismatic figure, he was involved at that time in several sexual liaisons with prominent women, but these were invariably devices aimed at furthering his interests. He took little or no interest in the children reported at that time to have been fathered by him. In 1951 he took part in a failed military coup against General Juan Domingo Peron, the elected leader of the country. Suarez Mason was forced to retreat to Uruguay where he helped topple Peron in 1955. He was received back in Buenos Aires with honour after the plot was finally successful.
Suarez Mason rose in rank, becoming a director of military intelligence and later made commander of the First Army Corps, a unit whose principal duty was to garrison the capital. In that position he played a key role in the overthrow of President Isabel Martinez de Peron, General Peron's widow, known in Argentina as "Isabelita".
In a position of power at the start of a subsequent period in which between 10,000 and 30,000 people lost their lives, he was a hard-line figure in a regime which stayed in power for seven years.
When the dictatorship crumbled in 1983 after the disaster of the Falklands War, Suarez Mason went to the United States, where his services to the Contras were unobtrusively recognised. In 1988, however, he was returned to Buenos Aires by Interpol to face charges of murdering 43 people and kidnapping a further 23, including newborn babies. Even though convicted for those crimes, he was amnestied by President Carlos Menem in 1990, but later placed under house arrest under new charges. In 2004 he was also condemned to life imprisonment in absentia by Italian courts.
Although prisoners aged over 70 are usually kept under house arrest in Argentina, he had been reimprisoned after abusing the terms of his detention. He had been awaiting the hearing of charges related to 200 kidnappings, 30 murders and the sale of the babies of political prisoners during the commonly known as "Proceso" in which he was a central figure.
Suarez Mason died at age 81 in the military hospital in Buenos Aires, having been taken there from his jail cell a few days earlier.
Trivia
A passionate footballer, he was prominent in the Buenos Aires club Argentinos Juniors where he had played as a goalkeeper in its second team. The club cancelled his membership in January 1999, a wounding blow which he carried to his death.
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