Federal Court of Buenos Aires Convicts Former Military Officers for Crimes Committed during the Dictatorship.

11-07-2022

Grace ATALUI MOKANGO

International Justice and Human Rights Researcher

Global Human Rights Defence

Argentina is embarking on a justice process for serious crimes committed decades ago due to the bloody decades-long internal conflict that ravaged the South American country.

Reuters reports that on 6 July 2022, Argentina's judiciary ruled that 19 former military officers should be jailed for crimes against humanity committed during the country's brutal military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, including the kidnapping of car factory workers. A wave of disappeared persons marked the dictatorship that ravaged Argentina. Human rights groups do not have a precise figure but refer to around 30,000 forced disappearances. That is why the sentences handed down by the federal court in the capital Buenos Aires include convictions for enforced disappearances, homicides, torture, and child abductions, crimes committed against some 350 victims during the military regime that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983.

It should be noted that the convictions also related to charges of kidnapping of seven workers from a Mercedes Benz factory in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, from 1976 onwards, by military forces with the support of company executives. The sentences handed down by the Federal Court to the 19 defendants are prison sentences. 

Source and further reading

Nicolás Miculin, Argentina jails ex-military officers for crimes during dictatorship, Reuters, ( 6 July 2022), from: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-jails-ex-military-officers-crimes-during-dictatorship-2022-07-06/