Dictatorship repressor sentenced to life Eduardo Ruffo paroled

Eduardo Alfredo Ruffo, sentenced to life imprisonment for cases of kidnapping, torture, and child abduction committed during the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) was released on parole, media outlet Pgina12 reported on Wednesday. Ruffo was member of the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE), the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (known as Triple A) and the task force that operated out of the clandestine detention center, Automotores Orletti Ruffo (80) was granted parole at the Federal Oral Court (TOF) No. 1 despite opposition from the victims and the prosecution. The court, who had previously rejected the public defenses requests on Ruffos behalf, invoked the guidelines set last December by the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation to release former police officer Eduardo Kalinec, sentenced to life imprisonment for his actions in the Atltico-Banco-Olimpo (ABO) detention centers. The kidnapping of Carlita Ruffo signed the lease contract for the mechanical workshop where the clandestine detention center known as Automotores Orletti operated in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Floresta.  One of the most infamous cases Ruffo was involved in was that of  Carla Carlita Rutila Arts. Carla and her mother Graciela Rutila were kidnapped in Bolivia by security forced in 1976 and later handed over to the Argentine military.  The pair was later transferred to Orletti.  Ruffo and his wife took the girl and from the mother renamed her Gina. Carla remained with them until  grandmother, Matilde Arts Company, managed to recover her in 1985. Carla lived in Spain and visited Argentina to testify against Ruffo. She died of cancer in 2017. Graciela remains disappeared to this day In 2011, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for kidnappings and torture at Orletti. The following year, he received a 14-year sentence for his role in the systematic plan to appropriate children.  In 2020, TOF No. 1 sentenced him to life imprisonment in the trial known as Orletti V. House arrest Ruffo has spent more than five years under house arrest. He lives in an apartment in the Belgrano neighborhood. He maintains contact with his son whose case was also investigated as a possible illegal appropriation. Ruffo had been requesting parole since 2021, but it had not succeeded. In interviews conducted to determine whether he qualified for the benefit, the repressor showed no remorse for having taken Carla, who also reported that she suffered mistreatment and abuse while she lived with the Ruffo couple.  I saved her life, he boasted on more than one occasion. Both the victims and prosecutor Pablo Ouvia opposed Ruffos parole. Ouvia also stressed that Ruffo remains silent about the fate of the disappeared and shows neither remorse nor empathy toward those still seeking to learn what happened to their loved ones. Cover photo credit: CELS