Argentina: Bignone convicted and jailed

[Penta]

The last leader of the military junta in Argentina, who had awarded himself and all his colleagues an amnesty for all the torturing and disappearing they did (eventually overturned by the Supreme Court), has been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his crimes at the Campo de Mayo, from which only 50 of the 4,000 detainees are said to have survived. Personally, I think he should have been allowed to live the rest of his life under house arrest (he's 82), but that it's a very good thing that some of the victims and their relatives are seeing justice at last and will be able to sleep better.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 103418.ece

[DrakeS]

Argentine ex-dictator to face trial for killings
05:16 AEST Tue May 4 2010



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Former Argentine military dictator Jorge Videla will face trial for a series of kidnaps, torture and 40 killings, including that of a German citizen, justice officials said Monday.

The case was the latest in a series against Videla, who came to power in 1976 at the head of a military government blamed for the death or disappearances of some 30,000 people.

The remains of most of the 40 victims were unearthed by forensic experts last year in Buenos Aires. Among them was Argentina-born German citizen Rolf Stawowiok, who was 20 at the time of his death in 1978.

Sources said many of the charges in the new case were linked to those remains that were identified.

After the remains were discovered, Germany issued an international arrest warrant for Videla, who is currently serving a life term at an Argentine barracks on multiple charges of human rights violations while at the head of the country's military junta from 1976 to 1981.

He is due in court later this month in the central city of Cordoba to answer accusations of torture and murder of 32 political prisoners in a separate case.

It will be the first time Videla appears in court since 1985, when he was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes.

The former dictator also is scheduled to face trial starting on September 20 in Buenos Aires for stealing 33 babies of opponents of the regime.

Videla is also wanted for his participation in Operation Condor, a campaign established by Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay's dictatorships to quash the opposition during the 1970s.

Argentina's Supreme Court last week ruled as unconstitutional a pardon granted to Videla by former president Carlos Menem in 1990. Videla was arrested again in 1998 for kidnapping children and other charges not included in his pardon.

Stawowiok's father, Desiderius, said his son was not active in the Argentine underground but was a sympathizer of the Peronist urban guerrilla group Montoneros, which was largely dismantled under Videla.

Stawowiok, who was working as a chemist in a metalworking factory, received a telephone call at work the day he disappeared and rushed out of the office, saying he planned to meet someone on Plaza Once in central Buenos Aires, according to a colleague.

He was never seen again.

The family received an indemnification payment from the Argentine government in 1995 but never received information on the circumstances of his death. German authorities reopened the case last year when Stawowiok's remains were discovered showing he had been shot several times.