Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has died in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.
Videla, who ruled Argentina during the Dirty War, died of natural causes in the Marcos Paz prison, which is located southwest of Buenos Aires, on Friday at the age of 87.
“Last night he didn’t feel well. He didn’t want to eat and this morning they found him dead in his cell,” Cecilia Pando, the president of the Association of Family and Friends of Political Prisoners, told reporters.
According to a medical report, he was found “without a pulse or pupillary reflex, so an EKG was performed confirming his death at 0825 (1125 GMT) on this date.”
Videla came to power in a 1976 coup against President Isabel Peron and led the military junta that controlled the country until 1981. The junta stayed in power until 1983.
The Dirty War — a campaign against the left and anyone thought to be connected with socialism — started during his rule. Between 13,000 and 30,000 people were kidnapped and “disappeared” by the military from 1976 to 1983.
The Dirty War was part of Operation Condor, under which Argentina’s military cooperated with dictatorships in Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay to share intelligence and assist to arrest each other’s political enemies. The CIA also played a part in Operation Condor by providing lists of suspects and other intelligence information to the military regimes.
On Tuesday, in a public appearance, Videla assumed “full military responsibility for the actions of the army in the war against terrorism.”
He was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 for a series of abuses under his regime, but was pardoned in 1990 by then President Carlos Menem.
In 2010, Videla was sentenced to life in prison for the disappearance of 31 prisoners. Later in 2012, he was sentenced to another 50 years for abducting children born to female prisoners and ordering that they be given to other families.
Videla expressed little regret for the abuses that took place during his rule.
“Let’s say there were seven thousand or eight thousand people who had to die to win the war against subversion,” Videla said recently in a prison interview.
1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who publicized the junta’s abuses, said Videla “never repented of the crimes, and he is taking a lot of information with him.”
IA/HGL
This article originally appeared on : Press TV