By Graham Keeley and Jorge Otaola
BARCELONA (Reuters) – An Argentine judge in charge of cases from the Franco dictatorship era in Spain has indicted a former Spanish minister on four counts of murder, according to court documents seen by Reuters on Saturday.
Judge Maria Servini, who is based in Buenos Aires, issued the ruling against Rodolfo Martin Villa, 87, Spain’s interior minister between 1976 and 1979.
The judge wrote that she found Martin Villa “criminally responsible for murder on at least four occasions, in which Pedro María Martínez Ocio, Romualdo Barroso Chaparro, Francisco Aznar Clemente and Germán Rodríguez Saíz were victims.”
Martin Villa told Spanish newspaper ABC: “I am calm. I’ll appeal.”
Spain passed an amnesty law in 1977 that pardoned crimes committed by Franco’s 36-year-old dictatorship. Hundreds of Spaniards then try to reverse this by resorting to Argentine justice, under the principle of universal justice.
Servini wrote that Martin Villa played a key role in the repressive structure of the dictatorship, which continued into the years immediately following Franco’s death in 1975.
The judge ordered the arrest of Martin Villa, who lives in Madrid, but said that would probably not happen.
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