Argentina sentences ten people to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity during the dictatorship

The trial, which began in 2020, tried twelve Argentines for kidnappings, arbitrary confinement, torture, rape, forced abortions, disappearances or theft of babies between 1976 and 1983.

This is the conclusion of a long legal battle. Argentine justice sentenced ten defendants to life prison terms for crimes against humanity on Tuesday March 26, following a lengthy trial relating to violence in three detention centers during the dictatorship (1976). -1983).

The trial, which began in 2020, tried twelve Argentines for acts of kidnapping, arbitrary confinement, torture, rape, forced abortions, disappearances or theft of babies. The number one federal court in La Plata, a city near the capital Buenos Aires, handed down ten life sentences, a 25-year prison sentence and an acquittal against twelve defendants, six others having died in the meantime.

The trial concerned more than 400 victims, passed through three “CCDs”, the infamous “clandestine detention centers” located within a 25 km radius around Buenos Aires. According to the association of Grandmothers of Place de Mai, 23 pregnant women were among the detainees held in the CCDs. Some suffered abortions forced by their tormentors, others disappeared and ten babies were “given” to families friendly to the regime, seven of these children having regained their identities years later.

The accused maintain their innocence

Among the accused were officers, non-commissioned officers, police officers and military doctors. All proclaimed their innocence or their absence at the time of the facts, and one justified the facts by a context of “war”.

“I am happy, we are going through a difficult time in the country regarding truth and memory”, María Victoria Moyano Artigas, born in the center of Banfield during her mother’s captivity, told AFP. The verdict comes against a backdrop of resurgence of the legacy of the dictatorship in the political debate, while the new ultraliberal president Javier Milei contests both the reading of this period (rather than a dictatorship, he evokes a “war” between the State and far-left guerrillas) and the toll of 30,000 dead or missing, according to human rights NGOs.