Life Term Urged for Argentine Terrorist Leader

BUENOS AIRES — The prosecution asked a federal court Thursday to sentence terrorist leader Mario Firmenich to life imprisonment for the 1974 kidnaping of two Argentine industrialists later ransomed for $60 million.

Prosecutor Juan Romero Victorica told Federal Judge Carlos Luft that Firmenich should receive the stiffest possible sentence because a bodyguard and an executive accompanying brothers Juan and Jorge Born were murdered during their kidnaping. The judge will render his verdict after reading defense arguments.

Firmenich, 37, was leader of a Marxist guerrilla movement called the Montoneros, which rampaged through Argentina in the mid-1970s, creating instability that finally triggered a military coup in 1976.

Other Side of Coin

Accusations against Firmenich are the mirror image of charges brought by the government of President Raul Alfonsin alleging massive human rights abuses against military commanders who suppressed the guerrillas.

Alfonsin ordered Firmenich’s arrest at the same time that he brought the charges against nine former junta members. The verdict in their trial is expected around year’s end.

Firmenich has been jailed here since his extradition from Brazil last year. In authorizing his extradition, a Brazilian court ruled that he could not be sentenced to more than 30 years, the most he could have received under Brazilian law. Argentine acceptance of the extradition with that proviso in effect limits a life term to 30 years.

A radical Catholic turned Peronist turned Marxist, Firmenich was once the most feared man in Argentina, the commanding general of an army of terrorists who convulsed the country and mocked attempts by a weak civilian government to control them.

First Action in 1970

He made his terrorist debut in the 1970 kidnaping and subsequent execution of former President Pedro Aramburu. Never arrested, he nevertheless was granted amnesty in 1973. By 1975, Firmenich’s Montonero guerrillas had grown to an estimated 7,000, fueled by the multi-million-dollar profits of kidnap and extortion.

When the armed forces seized power in 1976, they answered guerrilla terror by the Montoneros and a smaller Marxist band with state terrorism. With other top Montonero leaders, Firmenich fled Argentina in 1977.

At their trial, the nine former junta members, three of them military presidents who ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, have argued that they were forced to fight fire with fire to defeat the guerrillas in a war without quarter.

With his army destroyed, Firmenich lived in exiled comfort, presumably on the spoils of guerrilla terror. He spent time in Mexico, Cuba and Western Europe. In 1979, portraying himself as a journalist, he showed up in Nicaragua for the Sandinista victory there. Eventually, Firmenich settled in Brazil, married and fathered a daughter. He was living openly there when he was arrested last year.

Denies Kidnaping Role

Firmenich denies any role in the kidnaping of the Born brothers. Included in the evidence against him is the testimony of three journalists who attended a braggart 1975 Montonero press conference at which Firmenich appeared with Jorge Born as his prisoner. Jorge Born himself has identified Firmenich as one of his captors.

At Alfonsin’s behest, Argentine authorities sought seven Montonero leaders. Firmenich is the second to be arrested and brought to trial. The first, Ricardo Obregon Cano, former governor of the interior province of Cordoba, was sentenced to 10 years last month. The most important Montoneros still at large, Firmenich’s top two lieutenants, were both seen in Havana last summer by participants at a government-sponsored economic conference there.