BUENOS AIRES, (Reuters) – Jorge Rafael Videla, an austere former army commander who led Argentina during the bloodiest period of a “dirty war” dictatorship and was unrepentant about kidnappings and murders ordered by the state, died yesteriday at age 87.
Videla was the first president to head the military junta that “disappeared” thousands of suspected leftists from 1976 to 1983, and he spent his final years behind bars for human rights crimes including the systematic theft of babies born to political prisoners in secret torture centers.
He died of natural causes in his jail cell in a prison outside the capital, Buenos Aires, a government spokesman said.
“Videla presided over a government that engaged in one of the most cruel repressions that we have seen in Latin America in modern times,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Latin America for U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.
“He was arrogant to the end and unwilling to acknowledge his responsibility for the massive atrocities committed in Argentina,” Vivanco added. “Many of the secrets of the repression will die with him.”
Rights groups say up to 30,000 people were “disappeared” – a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered – during the dictatorship, which began in March 1976 when Videla and two other military leaders staged a coup against President Maria Estela Martinez de Peron, the widow of former leader Juan Domingo Peron.
Argentina’s left-wing guerrilla groups such as the Montoneros had been weakened by the time Videla came to power. He targeted union organizers, students, journalists and anyone else perceived to be associated with communism.
Last year Videla told an Argentine journalist that the crackdown he oversaw was the price that Argentina had to pay in order to remain a republic.
“War, by nature, is cruel,” Videla said. “An internal war, between brothers, is especially cruel.”
