[News] Argentine ex-dictator gets life for murders

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Argentine ex-dictator gets life for murders

23/12/2010 - 08:10:23
http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/argentine-ex-dictator-gets-life-for-murders-486723.html
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla was 
sentenced to life in prison for the torture and murder of 31 prisoners in 1976.

It is the first conviction for the military junta 
leader in 25 years of democracy in the country.

Videla, 85, who led the military coup that 
installed Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, was 
considered the architect of a dirty war that 
eliminated 13,000 people in a crackdown on armed 
left-wing guerrillas and their supporters, according to an official count.

The 31 prisoners were pulled from civilian jails 
and “shot while trying to escape” as the military 
consolidated its power in the months after the coup.

Videla claimed Argentine society demanded the 
crackdown to prevent a Marxist revolution, and 
complained that “terrorists” now ran the country.

Videla must serve his sentence in a civilian 
prison, the judges decided, ruling out the 
privileges he enjoyed after he was first 
convicted of crimes against humanity in 1985, as 
Argentina was struggling to return to democracy.

Videla served just five years of a life sentence 
in a military prison before former president 
Carlos Menem granted him and other junta leaders amnesty.

After a concerted campaign to reform Argentina’s 
judicial system and replace dictatorship-era 
judges, the supreme court overturned those 
amnesties in 2007, and current president Cristina 
Fernandez has encouraged a wave of new trials of 
former military and police figures involved in 
the clandestine torture centres where thousands 
of the regime’s opponents disappeared.

This was the first of dozens of trials coming up for Videla.

He was among two dozen defendants – most of them 
former military and police officials – charged 
with torture, murder and cover-ups in the deaths 
of the 31 political prisoners in provincial Cordoba.

Also sentenced to life was former General Luciano 
Benjamin Menendez, who directed the early war 
against leftist subversives across much of northern Argentina.

Just before he was sentenced, Menendez said it 
was historically revisionist to present armed 
leftist groups as passive victims with no responsibility for criminal acts.

The Montoneros and the People’s Revolutionary 
Army were already committing violent acts before the coup, he told the judges.

“They were combatants who took on certain risks,” 
Menendez said. “It’s not a crime against humanity to fight an armed combatant.”

Videla and Menendez accepted responsibility for 
the crackdown but claimed they had to act as they 
did to prevent what they considered would be a 
greater tragedy – the transformation of Argentina 
from a conservative Christian society to a Marxist state.

Ricardo Alfonsin, whose late father, President 
Raul Alfonsin, helped put Videla and other junta 
leaders on trial 25 years ago, said such 
arguments were meaningless coming from men who lack all moral authority.

Videla “represents the most absolute evil”, Mr 
Alfonsin – who created the Never Again commission 
that documented thousands of crimes against humanity - told Radio Continental.

It was Videla, Mr Alfonsin said, who “ordered 
them to torture, who ordered them to rape, who 
ordered them to kill or who tolerated them doing all of these aberrant things”.

About 13,000 people were killed or disappeared 
during the dirty war, according to a government 
count. Human rights groups estimate the figure is actually 30,000.

Read more: 
<http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/argentine-ex-dictator-gets-life-for-murders-486723.html#ixzz18wzujfDY>http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/argentine-ex-dictator-gets-life-for-murders-486723.html#ixzz18wzujfDY




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