Argentina ex-dictator admits dirty war "disappeared"
Source: Reuters
BUENOS AIRES | Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:50pm EDT
(Reuters) - Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the country's brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship "disappeared" leftist opponents, a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered, and said babies were taken from their parents.
Videla, 86, who was jailed for life in 2010 for murder, torture and kidnapping, has repeatedly justified the brutality of the military junta in the so-called Dirty War crackdown on left-wing opponents. Until now, he has also denied the forced disappearances.
Local media said that Videla admitted in interviews for a new book that the dictatorship killed 7,000 or 8,000 people.
"In every war people are crippled, killed and disappeared, their whereabouts unknown, that is a fact," Videla said in an interview broadcast on local television.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/14/us-argentina-dictator-idUSBRE83D0CK20120414
= new reply since forum marked as read
He has been a filthy, US-supported dictator. How dare these monsters.
From earlier this year:
January 27, 2012 6:25 AM
Ex-diplomat: US knew about Argentina baby thefts
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A former U.S. diplomat testified Thursday that American officials knew Argentina's military regime was taking babies from dead or jailed dissidents during its "dirty war" against leftists in the 1970s, and it appeared to be a systematic effort at the time.
Elliot Abrams testified by videoconference from Washington in the trial of former dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone and other military and police figures accused of organizing the theft of babies from women who were detained and then executed in the 1976-1983 junta's torture centers.
Abrams said U.S. officials were aware that some children had been taken and then illegally adopted by families loyal to the regime.
"We knew that it wasn't just one or two children," Abrams testified. There must have been some sort of directive from a high level official, he suggested: "a plan, because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed."
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The junta apparently saw the program as a way to prevent children from growing up "communist," Abrams said. Also, enabling loyal families who couldn't conceive to adopt the babies was seen as a blessing by the regime, he said.
More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57367249/ex-diplomat-us-knew-about-argentina-baby-thefts/
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Loved ones of the tortured and murdered, at Videla's trial, and demonstrating. The protesting loved ones as well were sometimes harrassed, arrested, tortured, and murdered for their own protests.
Pregnant prisoners were tortured, and kept until delivering the infants, sometimes forced to give birth, then they, just like the men, were handcuffed to each other, drugged and thrown into the ocean from airplanes.
