Trelew massacre

The Trelew Massacre was a mass execution of 16 political prisoners, militants of different Peronist and left organizations, in Rawson Penitentiary by the conservative military government of Argentina. 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.

At 18:30 on 15 August 1972, 110 captured guerrillas attempted a massive escape from the prison at Rawson, the capital of Chubut Province in Argentina. In their escape, the guerrillas shot dead one guard (Gregorio Valenzuela) and another (Justino Galarraga) was critically wounded. Only six of the 110 inmates —which were members of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and Montoneros— succeeded. According to Galarraga (who survived by feigning death), Valenzuela was shot in the head as he lay wounded by Santucho's pregnant wife.

The planner and head of the operation was Mario Roberto Santucho, leader of the Workers' Revolutionary Party, although some reports claim that Marcos Osatinsky (FAR) had started to plan the prison escape before the arrival of Santucho. 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 an Austral BAC One-Eleven airliner, previously captured by a guerrilla group of supporters, whose members were passengers, waited to fly the escapees to the neighboring country of Chile, then ruled by socialist President Salvador Allende.

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