Detained in São Paulo, one of the perpetrators of the 1977 Spanish massacre | Internationale

Brazilian police arrested in São Paulo on Thursday Carlos García Juliá, internationally sought for his participation in a terrorist act of 1977, known as the murder of Atocha lawyers. The confirmation of the arrest was made by sources from the Spanish Embbady in Brasilia.

The Spaniard is under the custody of the Brazilian Federal Police. The superintendent of the body will give Friday a press conference to the Spanish police who participated in the operation to give details on the capture and possible extradition.

The Spanish authorities have requested the extradition of García Juliá, 24 years old. when he committed the murder of attorneys Atocha and was sentenced to 193 years imprisonment for five murders.

Three labor lawyers, Enrique Valdelvira Ibañez and Luis Javier Benavides Orgaz died on January 24, 1977. Francisco Javier Sauquillo, law student Serafin Holgado and an administrative agent, Angel Rodríguez Leal. Four others were seriously injured. The crime marked the Spanish transition to democracy after the death, two years earlier, of the dictator Francisco Franco.

García Juliá tried to escape in 1979, before the trial, from the Ciudad Real prison in which he was. After 14 years in prison, he was allowed by a judge to travel to Paraguay on probation, on the pretext that he had an offer of employment. In 1994, a court asked García Juliá to return to Spain. He ignored the request. Two years later, he was arrested in Bolivia for drug trafficking and imprisoned in a maximum security prison in Palmasola (La Paz).

Four extremists involved in the commission of the crime were sentenced to 464 years of imprisonment. Lerdo de Tejada was tried but did not sit on the dock. José Fernández Cerrá was sentenced to 193 years and Francisco Albaladejo to 73 years. In its judgment, the national public considered that, with Leocadio Jiménez Caravaca, also continued, constituted a "militant and ideological group, defender of a radicalized and totalitarian political ideology, far from the institutional change underway in Spain".