Another sentence for Argentine ex-dictator
Source: Associated Press
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.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Another-sentence-for-Argentina-ex-dictator-5807708.php
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)Kissinger approved Argentinian 'dirty war'
Declassified US files expose 1970s backing for junta
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian, Friday 5 December 2003 21.20 EST
Henry Kissinger gave his approval to the "dirty war" in Argentina in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed, according to newly declassified US state department documents.
Mr Kissinger, who was America's secretary of state, is shown to have urged the Argentinian military regime to act before the US Congress resumed session, and told it that Washington would not cause it "unnecessary difficulties".
The revelations are likely to further damage Mr Kissinger's reputation. He has already been implicated in war crimes committed during his term in office, notably in connection with the 1973 Chilean coup.
The material, obtained by the Washington-based National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, consists of two memorandums of conversations that took place in October 1976 with the visiting Argentinian foreign minister, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti. At the time the US Congress, concerned about allegations of widespread human rights abuses, was poised to approve sanctions against the military regime.
According to a verbatim transcript of a meeting on October 7 1976, Mr Kissinger reassured the foreign minister that he had US backing in whatever he did.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/06/argentina.usa
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Reagan and Argentinas 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 Reagans 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/