Anibal Gordon was an Argentine suspected of being a leader of the Triple A death squad

Death squad

A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...

, active during the "Dirty War

Dirty War

The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...

" in the 1970s. He was also a member of the SIDE

Side

Side was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...

 intelligence agency between 1968 and 1984.

At the time of his death in prison, Gordon was accused of several kidnapping

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

s and murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

s. He had been convicted of carrying out the murders of José Rucci, Silvio Frondizi

Silvio Frondizi

Silvio Frondizi was an Argentine intellectual and lawyer, brother of President Arturo Frondizi and of the philosopher Risieri Frondizi....

 and Rodolfo Ortega Peña. He was also related to the Puccio family, responsible of four kidnappings in the 1980s.

Gordon's police record note various criminal offenses between 1951 and 1972. Freed in 1973, he then engaged in racketeering, kidnapping and assassination

Assassination

To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...

s. After the return to democracy in 1983, Gordon was arrested in the mountains of Córdoba Province

Córdoba Province (Argentina)

Córdoba is a province of Argentina, located in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are : Santiago del Estero, Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, La Pampa, San Luis, La Rioja and Catamarca...

 in January 1984, charged with the kidnapping of activist Guillermo Patricio Kelly

Guillermo Patricio Kelly

Guillermo Patricio Kelly was the leader of the Nationalist Liberation Alliance of Argentina from 1953 to 1955. Kelly sought to distance the ALN from its anti-Semitic past and met with Israel's ambassador to Argentina, Dr. Arie Kubovy during which Kelly informed Dr. Kubovy that the ALN had forsworn...

 which had taken place on 24 August 1983. He was sentenced October 1986 to sixteen years of prison. He died in jail from lung cancer

Lung cancer

Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

, on 13 September 1987.

Gordon denied participating in the Triple A, although he did admit having worked in the clandestine detention center of the Automotores Orletti during the dictatorship

National Reorganization Process

The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...

.