General Who Captured Che Guevara Dead at 84

The Bolivian general who captured Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara in 1967, leading the military operation that took down Guevara's communist insurrection, has died at age 84. The BBC reports that Gary Prado Salmón "became a national hero" after Guevara's capture; the guerrilla fighter was executed the very next day. Mario Terán, the Bolivian officer who carried out the execution, fatally shooting Guevara, died last year.

Of Salmón, his son wrote on social media that he was "accompanied by his wife and children" when he died Saturday, Yahoo News reports. "He left us a legacy of love, honesty and mettle. He was an amazing person." He wrote a book aptly titled How I Captured Che, but his son has previously said, "for him capturing Che was not the most important thing he did in his life—rather, it was to contribute to making the armed forces a democratic institution that would respect the constitution and laws." He was paralyzed after being accidentally shot in the spine in 1981, and retired from the military seven years later. (More Che Guevara stories.)