Argentine Anticommunist Alliance The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance ( , usually known as " Triple A " or AAA ) was a right - wing death squad founded in Argentina in 1973 and particularly active under Isabel Perón ' s rule ( 1974 – 1976 ) . Initially associated with the Peronist right , the organisation opposed the Peronist left and other leftist organizations . The AAA acted against a wide range of government opponents , not just communists . The Triple A was secretly led by José López Rega , Minister of Social Welfare and personal secretary of Juan Perón . Rodolfo Almirón , arrested in Spain in 2006 , was alleged to be his chief operating officer of the group , and was officially head of López Rega ' s and Isabel Perón ' s personal security . He was extradited from Spain in 2006 and prosecuted ; he died in jail in June 2009 . SIDE agent Anibal Gordon was another important member of the Triple A , although he always denied it . He was tried in Argentina in 1985 after the restoration of democracy and convicted in October 1986 . Gordon died in prison of lung cancer the next year . In 2006 , Argentine Judge Norberto Oyarbide ruled the Triple A had committed " crimes against humanity , " which meant their crimes were exempt from statutes of limitations . Suspects can be prosecuted for actions committed in the 1970s and early 1980s . Creation . The " Triple A " was believed to have been organized in 1973 by José López Rega and Alberto Villar , deputy chief of the Argentine federal police , during the brief interim presidency of Raúl Lastiri in 1973 . Reportedly , the movement was conceived at a high - level Peronist meeting on October 1 , 1973 , attended by President Raúl Lastiri , Interior Minister Benito Llambí , Social Welfare Minister José López Rega , general secretary of the Presidency José Humberto Martiarena and various provincial governors . The group has been defined by legal rulings as part of state terrorism , operating under the governments of Lastiri , Perón and Isabel Perón through 1976 . Villar and his wife were assassinated in 1974 , from a bomb was planted on his cabin cruiser in Tigre by members of the " Montoneros " , an urban guerrilla group . López Rega , a devotee of occultism and self - styled divinator , became a powerful force in the Peronist movement . He exerted great influence over Perón , who was elected to the presidency and took office in 1973 , and his wife Isabel Martínez de Perón , elected as vice - president , who succeeded to the presidency upon Perón ' s sudden death on 1 July 1974 . To support the paramilitary group , López Rega drew on funds from the Ministry of Social Welfare , which he controlled . Some of the members of the Triple A had earlier taken part in the Peronist 1973 Ezeiza massacre . On the day Perón returned from exile , snipers shot and killed numerous left - wing Peronists at the mass gathering to welcome his return , leading to the definitive separation between left and right - wing Peronists . The Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzón ' s investigations , directed at human rights abuses internationally , revealed that Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie had also worked with the Triple A , and was present at Ezeiza . Delle Chiaie also worked with the Chilean DINA in Chile , and for Hugo Banzer , a Bolivian dictator , . According to a 1983 " New York Times " article , the group was founded when there were an increasing number of guerrilla attacks by left - wing groups , which were met by harsh repression of political dissident s on the part of the military , paramilitary and police force s . This environment of social unrest was the justification used by the subsequent military junta for its Dirty War against political opponents . But testimony at the 1985 Juicio a las Juntas trial established that by 1976 , both the ERP and the Montoneros had been dismantled , and the political dissidents had never posed a real threat to the government . Victims . The group first came to national attention on 21 November 1973 in its attempt to murder Argentine Senator Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen by a car bomb . The AAA went on to kill 1 , 122 people , according to an appendix to the 1983 CONADEP report , including suspected Montoneros and ERP leftist guerrillas and their sympathizers , but the group expanded its targets to other political opponents , including judges , police chiefs , and social activist s . In total , it is suspected of having killed more than 1500 people . The group is strongly suspected in the 1974 assassination of Jesuit Carlos Mugica , a friend of Mario Firmenich , the founder of Montoneros . Other people murdered by the organisation include Silvio Frondizi , brother of former president Arturo Frondizi ; Julio Troxler , former - vice director of the police ; Alfredo Curutchet , a defense attorney for political prisoners ; and Hipólito Atilio López , a key union leader of Córdoba . The CONADEP commission on human rights violations documented the Triple A ' s execution of 19 homicides in 1973 , 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975 , while its involvement in several hundred others is also suspected . The 1986 study by Ignacio Jansen González is often cited ; he estimates the group committed 220 terrorist attacks from July to September 1974 , which killed 60 and severely wounded 44 ; as well as 20 kidnap pings . Federal judge Norberto Oyarbide , who signed the extradition order against former leader of the AAA Rodolfo Almirón , ruled in December 2006 that Triple A ' s crimes qualified as human rights violations and the " beginning of the systematic process directed by the state apparatus " during the dictatorship . Death threat s caused many of the opposition to leave Argentina . Amongst many well - known and respected people who left are mathematician Manuel Sadosky , artists Héctor Alterio , Luis Brandoni and Nacha Guevara , politician and entrepreneur José Ber Gelbard , lawyer and politician Héctor Sandler , and actor Norman Briski . Others . Many Triple A members fled to Spain , where they became involved in murders of other leftists . Fifteen former AAA members ( including Rodolfo Almirón were involved in the Montejurra 1976 shooting of two left - wing Carlist members at a large annual gathering in Spain . Others implicated in the event were Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie and Jean Pierre Cherid , former member of the French OAS and at the time part of the GAL death squad in Spain . Former Triple A member José María Boccardo took part with Cherid and others in the 1978 assassination of Argala , the " etarra . " In 1973 he was part of the assassination of Franco ' s Prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco .