Jorge Anaya

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Rear Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya (27 September 1926 – 9 January 2008) was a member of the Argentine Navy. He was born in Bahía Blanca, in the province of Buenos Aires. He participated in the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganisation Process (1976-1983) and, along with Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and Basilio Lami Dozo, was a member of the Third Military Junta that ruled Argentina between 1981 and 1982.

During the 1982 Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas), he served as the commander-in-chief of the navy. He devised and commanded Operation Algeciras, in which Argentine commandos were to sabotage a Royal Navy warship harboured in Gibraltar; the plan was thwarted at the last minute when communications were intercepted.^[1]

In the 1985 Trial of the Juntas he was acquitted of charges of kidnapping, torture, enslavement, concealing the truth, usurpation of power, and false declarations.

In 1997, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón requested the arrest and extradition of 45 members of the Argentine military, and one civilian, for crimes of genocide, state terrorism, and torture committed during the "Dirty War" period of the de facto regime. Jorge Anaya was a member of that group.^[2] The request was denied on several occasions by the democratically elected Argentine government, which argued that it was inadmissible on grounds of inapplicable jurisdiction.

On 27 July 2003, by means of Decree 420/03, President Néstor Kirchner amended the criteria under which the extraditions had been refused, ordering that the legal proceedings requested by the Spanish courts go ahead and thus enabling the extraditions to proceed.^[3]

In August 2003, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar ordered the cessation of the extradition proceedings for crimes committed in Argentina under the de facto regime. That decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005,^[4] which ordered that Garzón's requested extraditions continue. In November 2006, while waiting to be interrogated by an examining magistrate, he suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the naval hospital; he remained under house arrest after his discharge from hospital, but was never deemed fit enough to stand trial. He died on 9 January 2008.^[5]