The Trelew Massacre was the retaliatory government killing of 16 militants of different Peronist and left organizations held as political prisoners in Rawson Penitentiary. The prisoners were recaptured after an escape attempt and subsequently shot down by marines led by Lieutenant Commander Luis Emilio Sosa in a simulated new attempt to escape. The marines forced the prisoners to fake a new escape, then executed them as revenge by the dictatorship for the successful escape of some of their comrades during the initial prison break. The massacre took place on the morning of 22 August 1972 in the Almirante Marcos A. Zar Airport, an airbase of the Argentine Navy near the city of Trelew, Chubut in Patagonia.
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On 15 August at 18:30, 110 political prisoners attempted a massive escape from the prison at Rawson, the capital of Chubut Province in Argentina. Only six of the 110 inmates (members of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and Montoneros) succeeded.
The planner and head of the operation was Mario Roberto Santucho, leader of the Revolutionary Workers Party, although some reports say that Marcos Osatinsky (FAR) had started to plan the escape even before the arrival of Santucho the prison. These two leaders along with Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Roberto Quieto, Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Domingo Menna made up the so-called Leakage Committee, and were the only ones able to escape, thanks to a waiting Ford Falcon, and get to Trelew airport where a BAC One-Eleven airliner Southern Company, previously captured by a guerrilla group of supporters whose members were passengers, waited to take the escapees to the neighboring country of Chile, then ruled by socialist President Salvador Allende.
Other vehicles, which should have been waiting for the rest of the escapees, weren't at the front of the prison due to a misunderstanding with the previously agreed-upon signals. However, a second group of 19 escapees managed to reach the airport on their own via three taxis, but arrived just as the aircraft took off.
When they saw their chance of escape disappear, this group called a press conference, laid down their arms without resistance and surrendered to the military personnel of the Navy that surrounded the area, hoping to get a government guarantee for their lives in the presence of journalists and judicial authorities. A military patrol under the command of Lieutenant Commander Luis Emilio Sosa, deputy chief of the Naval Air Base Almirante Zar, led the recaptured prisoners via a public transport unit to that military facility. Rejecting the prisoners' request to return to Rawson Prison, Captain Sosa argued that the new site would be temporary but necessary as a prison riot at Rawson was still going on. Unfortunately, the judge Alejandro Godoy, the director of the newspaper Jornada, the deputy director of the newspaper El Chubut, LU17 director Hector "Pepe" Castro and the lawyer Mario Abel Amaya, all of whom accompanied the prisoners as guarantors for their safety, were not allowed to enter with them under the excuse that the number of people was too large, and were forced to leave. The spectacular escape attempt and partial success of the six top guerrilla leaders, who later managed to travel from Chile to Cuba, had the military government of the self-proclaimed Argentine Revolution and the public in suspense for tense days. The general feeling was that bloody reprisals would occur if the six escaped rebel leaders were not returned to Argentina. Because of this perception, on the morning of August 17 Justicialist Party sent a telegram to Interior Minister Arturo Mor Roig (part of the Radical Party board) stating that they demanded respect for human rights of the political prisoners in the Rawson prison unit, and that they held him responsible for all the prisoners' safety and well-being.
While the government of Alejandro Agustin Lanusse tried pushing the president of Chile Salvador Allende into deporting the political escapees as criminals, the whole area of Rawson and Trelew were virtually occupied by military forces of the army and gendarmerie, who were patrolling continuously and made additional escape attempts impossible. The air base in Trelew maintained a large force of three thousand troops from the Navy. In such a high tension climate, members of the Board of Chiefs of the three armed forces, employees and ministers met the night of August 21 at the Government House. They didn't provide any information to waiting news reporters. That same night, at 03:30 hours on August 22, at the Almirante Zar Naval Base, the 19 detainees were suddenly awakened and led out of their cells. According to the testimony of the three surviving prisoners, they were forced to look at the floor and gunned down by a patrol under Lieutenant Commander Luis Emilio Sosa, and the tenient Roberto Bravo. Most died on the spot, while the injured were pushed down on the floor. The official version of events indicated that there was a new escape attempt, with 16 dead and three wounded among the prisoners, but no casualties in the ranks of the Navy. That night, the government sanctioned Law 19.797, which banned any dissemination of information regarding guerrilla organizations. In the following days, there were demonstrations in major cities of Argentina, and a number of bombs were placed in government offices to protest the killings.
Those killed were:
Survivors:
Two of the main people responsible for the massacre, Vice-Admiral Hermes Quijada and minister Arturo Mor Roig, were later killed by the ERP.
The Argentian Secretary for Human Rights, Eduardo Luis Duhalde, who represented some of the 19 political prisoners, said about the massacre:
| “ | As a lawyer, it is the most impotent I have ever felt. Under a dictatorship there is no rule of law, and therefore my role was demoted to one of observer. | ” |