A man suspected of kidnapping, torturing and murdering opposition activists in South America in the 1970s and early 1980s has been arrested in Italy and faces a landmark prosecution there.

Nestor Jorge Fernández Troccoli, a former naval intelligence officer in Uruguay, is believed to have been involved in Operation Condor, the covert operation by several military dictatorships to eliminate dissidents.

The Italian authorities have issued another 139 arrest warrants for senior political leaders and officers considered responsible for the deaths of an estimated tens of thousands of “Desaparecidos” — the disappeared. Many had dual South American and Italian nationality and the Italian authorities will request their extradition so they can stand trial in Italy.

Under Italian law, magistrates can investigate the killings of Italian citizens overseas, and this is the first time that the Italian authorities have gone after those blamed for South America’s “Dirty War”.

Mr Troccoli, 60, of Montevideo, is believed by Italian investigators to have been an operative of Fusna, the Uruguayan naval intelligence service. He had been living in Salerno, southern Italy, for several years. He was arrested on Christmas Eve and will be transferred to a prison in Rome after the holiday.A warrant for his arrest was also issued by Uruguay after he failed to appear in court on similar charges in Montevideo.

The investigation leading to the issue of the Italian arrest orders originated with evidence from relatives of Italian nationals who were among the “Desaparecidos”. The 140 warrants include orders for the arrest of the former Argentine dictator General Jorge Rafaél Videla; Emilio Eduardo Massera, the former chief of the Argentine Navy; and Jorge María Bordaberry, who led a military dictatorship in Uruguay in 1973-76.

According to the court’s reconstruction of events, Mr Troccoli was often present at the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada in Argentina, where many hundreds of political opponents were detained, tortured and killed. The specific charges against him are multiple homicide and kidnapping regarding four members of an Uruguayan anti-government group.

The disappeared

50,000 estimated deaths across Latin America resulting from Operation Condor

7 The number of South American dictatorships — Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia and, briefly, Peru — in the Condor programme, which carried out the secret, illegal, arrest, torture and execution of political opponents.

8,000 people in Paraguay believed to have been arrested, tortured and murdered by the end of the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner in 1989

Sources: derechos.org; desaparecidos.org; derechos.net; Times archives

Times Recommends

• Experts baffled by vanishing sea lions
• CIA caught in a dirty and secretive war
• Double life of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab