Spanish police have arrested a former Argentine police official suspected of committing human rights abuses during the South American country's dirty war, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Friday.
Jorge Alberto Soza was arrested July 7 in the eastern town of Ontinyent but details were not released immediately "for operational reasons," a police spokeswoman told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in keeping with force rules.
The 72-year-old is wanted in Argentina in connection with 18 cases of unlawful detention, kidnapping and torture between 1975 and 1977, when he was an assistant Federal Police commissioner and chief delegate in the southern Argentine city of Neuquen.
Soza has been held in a Madrid jail pending his transfer to Argentina since his arrest. He had been living in the nearby town of Carcaixent, 197 (122 miles) north of the Mediterranean port of Alicante, since 1992.
Thousands of dissidents were killed or disappeared during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship.
