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| Videla in his heyday |
On Dec. 23, Jorge Rafael Videla, de facto president of the military junta, was condemned to life in a regular penitentiary - not the potential country club of a military prison. The verdict from the federal court in the province of Cordoba found Videla guilty of the crimes of torture, murder, and kidnapping in that province during the dictatorship. Luciano Benjamin Menéndez, head of the nation's third army during the dictatorship also was sentenced to life but will have to undergo a medical evaluation to determine if he can serve his sentence.
The same federal court sentenced 21 other former military and police officials to prison terms for human rights crimes, 17 of them for life. Seven individuals were pardoned.
A day earlier, a federal court in Buenos Aires condemned Rául Antonio Guglielminetti, an ex-civilian intelligency agent for the army, to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed in three notorious secret "detention" facilities in the capital city known as Atlético, Banco, and Olimpico. Guglielminetti was multi-talented, selling real estate and possessions of "disappeared" persons, laundering money from Miami to Tierra del Fuego, and spying.
The same court sentenced three other former military and police officials to 25 years. Twelve of those accused in the trial were sentenced to life. One was absolved.
Government figures put the number of political opponents murdered by the military regime at around 11,000 but human rights groups use a higher figure of 33,000.
The administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is committed to continuing the prosecutions against hundreds of other human rights criminals in her last year in office before next year's elections.
Fernández and her husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her in office as president and jump-started the trials, were militant leftists as youths and themselves targeted by the military regime. Kirchner passed away earlier this year at age 60.
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