
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla died at 6:30 am on Friday, local time, at 87 years old. He was in prison in Marcos Paz in which he was imprisoned after conviction for the atrocities of his regime. The wife of one of the military junta and known activist in favor of the coup leaders, Cecilia Pando, explained that the former president fell ill Thursday night and did not want to dine. Then the way to hospital, hospitalization and death. Videla was born in Mercedes, in the province of Buenos Aires, August 2, 1925.
Life sentences – Videla was statocondannato to two life sentences plus 50 years in prison for the bloody and systematic repression of dissidents Argentines during his presidency, which lasted from 1976 to 1981. After his term followed by two more years of chaos, with the new leader of Argentina, Roberto Viola, who was appointed president for life, but a few months in office, by Leopoldo Galtieri (famous for the Falklands / Malvinas) and Reynaldo Bignone. The military junta of the then Commander-in-chief of the army Videla seized power in a coup against President Isabel Peron on March 24, 1976 and held power until 1983. With the restoration of democracy came the trials and sentences.
The MISSING, THE TORTURE AND CHILDREN – Under his dictatorship died, disappeared – so-called desaparecidos – or about 30 were tortured. 000 people. Under President Videla within a few months were suspended trade union freedoms and civil rights, the former president admitted to being responsible for the deaths of at least 7. 000 people. The two life sentences coming from different processes, the remaining 50 are linked to a drama parallel to that of the disappeared: the kidnapping of the 35 children of these people, including dozens of children born during the captivity and torture of women, then given up for adoption in military families. But it would not have been a final judgment against Videla, against which other procedures were open.
THE NEW POPE, THE CHURCH AND THE DICTATORSHIP – The name of topical Videla was back on March 11 of this year, with the election to the papacy by Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Papa Francesco, in fact, was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and immediately began to circulate on the Net a photo of an alleged comunionesomministrata the same Bergoglio just Videla. He had unearthed the American director Michael Moore, but the age of the priest does not coincide with what would have been the new Pope at the time. It remains, however, the impression of a strong proximity of the Church in Argentina to a dictator. Bergoglio, during the dictatorship just a Jesuit priest, was nevertheless accused in a librodi have been aware of what was happening under the Videla regime. In fact, in confirmation of this, Bergoglio in 2010 testified against dictators in the process sull'Esma, the School of Mechanical Navy who was one of the main centers of torture Videla.
TWO MONTHS AGO attack CRISTINA KIRCHNER – Videla has never denied his actions and, in March, the prison had launched its latest provocation, remember the newspaper Clarin: harangue against President Cristina Kirchner. He had called his former army buddies "from 58 to 68 degrees still to fight" so that should take up arms against the "President Cristina and his followers." The president, as well as her husband Nestor Kirchner who preceded her in charge, would be guilty of a policy on human rights' has lost its relevance since it was discovered that, beyond their moral significance, have been used as a weapon political pressure in many negotiations, such as the Plan de Viviendas which has benefited from the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. "
FLIGHTS OF DEATH – Just the mothers are the main witnesses in the matter of human rights. Their sons and daughters have been arrested, held captive over the years, and at their death the bodies were never returned. Hence the name disappeared. Any grandchildren, now in their thirties and beyond, they will never know their abuelas, grandmothers. The maxi trial for 789 of these mortisi is only open in December. Were re-narrated in detail the sufferings and deaths of 789 of those people, thrown into the ocean with the so-called death flights: the prisoners were shipped out every Wednesday of cargo in Buenos Aires, then after a few hours of flight , thrown overboard tied, blindfolded, drugged. Not if they saved anyone of these, at least, you know for sure the names.