Argentina "Dirty War" General Gets 25 Years

[Psychoblues]

I wonder how many "dirty war" generals there are out there?

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An Argentine court on Tuesday sentenced former military junta member Cristino Nicolaides to 25 years in prison for conspiring to murder leftist opponents during the 1976-83 so-called dirty war.

Seven other military officials were ordered to serve prison terms of between 20 years and 25 years for kidnapping and killing several members of a leftist guerrilla group, Montoneros, during the dictatorship.

Nicolaides, the military regime's last army commander, is the highest-ranking official to be convicted of human rights crimes since "dirty war" amnesty laws and pardons were scrapped in 2003.

Rights activists and relatives of dictatorship victims applauded the verdict after it was read aloud, and some yelled insults at the men as they filed out of the courtroom.

Nicolaides, who is in his early 80s, was not present at the hearing.

Earlier this year, the courts handed down life sentences to three rights abusers -- two police officers and a Roman Catholic priest who served as police chaplain -- arguing they had committed crimes against humanity.

As many as 30,000 leftists and dissidents were kidnapped and killed during military rule and officials crushed several small leftist guerrilla groups operating in the South American country.

A former coast guard officer died last week, just four days before he was to face a verdict on decades-old torture charges. Investigators found that cyanide likely killed him and arrested his wife and two children for questioning.

(Reporting by Damian Wroclavsky, writing by Hilary Burke, editing by David Wiessler)

More: http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldN...ldNews&rpc=401

Maybe the torture thing got him?

 

[markdevera]

Interesting to be able to post my 2-cents worth after reading the book Guerrillas And Generals by Paul Lewis, which I got for Christmas and that in my opinion is the most thoroughly researched and informative book dealing with what amounted to be a civil war in Argentina. We have in recent days jailed for life, General Jorge Videla and others (Generals Bussi, Menendez, etc) of the military and police. But we mustn't stop here, and we must now be brave enough to go for the leaders and henchmen of the ultra-left, such as the Montoneros and EPR. These 'CTs' (Communist Terrorists) were ones that started it all with the killing of Dr. Oberdan Sallustro, US citizen John Swint and numerous other Ford, Fiat, Renault, General Motors and Chrysler executives, at the beginning of the 1970's. These were the 'CTs' that scared away foreign investment (i.e. McDonalds, Peugeot, etc.), killed hundreds and wounded thousands of policemen, unleashed a wave of bombings that destroyed and damaged thousands of buildings, and all this before the military coup of 1976! It was also the EPR and Montoneros which provoked the armed forces into ending its period of isolation in March 1976, and sending the army back into the streets and the jungles of Tucuman which resulted in the disappearances of 13,000 'CTs' and their supporters over the 1976-83 period. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other pro-left human rights groups may cry and complain about the disappearance of 30,000 so-called 'idealistic young people', but the bitter pill of truth is that the actual number of disappeared in Argentina is around 13,000 and that the bulk of them (some 10,000 by their own admission) were 'CT's'.