Another sentence for Argentine ex-dictator
Another sentence for Argentine ex-dictator
| October 7, 2014 | Updated: October 7, 2014 10:36pm
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The last military president in Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship received another prison sentence on Tuesday, this time for the kidnapping and torture of 32 factory workers.
A court in Buenos Aires sentenced Reynaldo Bignone to 23 years in prison for the human rights violations. The workers were forcibly disappeared by the military during the so-called Dirty War against leftist dissidents and other opponents.
The 86-year-old Bignone is already serving combined life sentences in more than two dozen cases involving crimes against humanity.
The Buenos Aires court also sentenced former Gen. Santiago Omar to life in prison for his role in dozens of illegal raids, kidnappings, torture and the killing of three people.
Human rights groups say about 30,000 people died or disappeared in Argentina's brutal dictatorship.
More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Another-sentence-for-Argentina-ex-dictator-5807708.php
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]Reagan and Argentina’s Dirty War
May 17, 2013
By Robert Parry
The death of ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, a mastermind of the right-wing state terrorism that swept Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, means that one more of Ronald Reagan’s old allies is gone from the scene.
Videla, who fancied himself a theoretician of anti-leftist repression, died in prison at age 87 after being convicted of a central role in the Dirty War that killed some 30,000 people and involved kidnapping the babies of “disappeared” women so they could be raised by military officers who were often implicated in the murders of the mothers.
The leaders of the Argentine junta also saw themselves as pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. Indeed, the chilling word “disappeared” was coined in recognition of their novel tactic of abducting dissidents off the streets, torturing them and then murdering them in secret – sometimes accomplishing the task by chaining naked detainees together and pushing them from planes over the Atlantic Ocean.
With such clandestine methods, the dictatorship could leave the families in doubt while deflecting international criticism by suggesting that the “disappeared” might have traveled to faraway lands to live in luxury, thus combining abject terror with clever propaganda and disinformation.
More:
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/17/reagan-and-argentinas-dirty-war/