Luciano Arruga (born February 28, 1992) is an Argentine teenager who has been missing since January 31, 2009, when he was intercepted by police in Buenos Aires Lomas del Mirador, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. A survey with dogs found that Arruga had been in Lomas de Mirador police station no. 8, and in one of the police patrol cars which, that same night, had not made its scheduled route and instead, according to the electronic record, circulated through a nearby wasteland.[1]
The case has been presented by human rights organisations in Argentina as an emblematic example of enforced disappearance during democracy and organisations such as the Committee on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations, which in its report of 2010 requires the Argentine authorities "conclude a thorough and impartial investigation in conformity with the Convention on the Rights of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances."[2] In February 2010, the family requested to classify the investigation as a case of forced disappearance which would pass the case to the federal courts, but the petition has so far been declined and the cause remains in Court No. 5 of La Matanza.[3]
Since 1983, 2,826 people have died in Argentina at the hands of trigger-happy police, inside prisons or juvenile institutes. Half of these deaths were of young, poor males under 25 years, according to the human rights group, Coordinator Against Police Repression (CORREPI).[4]