By Cliff Montgomery – Dec. 27th, 2010
Jorge Videla, a former fascist dictator of Argentina, last week was sentenced to life in prison for the 1976torture and murder of 31 left-wing prisoners–killings which occurred shortly after he took power in a militarycoup tacitly approved by the United States.
Videla, 85, was one of the tyrants who ran a brutal junta in Argentina from 1976 to 1981. It’s generally thoughtthat he was the creator of an iron-fisted ‘dirty war’ to murder left-wing dissidents without trial.
The fascist regime made about 30,000 people “disappear”–several individuals were tossed from aircraft intothe ocean during night-time flights, according to human rights groups.
Numerous others were simply tortured and killed under the junta’s oppressive rule.
And the 31 prisoners Videla has just been convicted of killing back in 1976? They were yanked from civilian jailsand were “shot while trying to escape.”
“Videla … is a manifestation of state terrorism,” declared judge Maria Elba Martinez as she handed down theformer dictator’s sentence on Dec. 22nd in Cordoba, Argentina.
Last Tuesday Videla was in old form, telling the court that “yesterday’s enemies are in power and from there,they are trying to establish a Marxist regime.” The former dictator further screamed that Argentina now is runby “terrorists”.
“Gen Videla had been sentenced to life in prison for torture, murder and other crimes in 1985,” stated BBCNews last Wednesday, “but was pardoned in 1990 under an amnesty given by the president at the time, CarlosMenem.
“In April 2010, the [Argentine] Supreme Court upheld a 2007 federal court move to overturn his pardon,” BBCNews continued, “clearing the way for the court case which ended with his life sentence on Wednesday.”
In 2007, Videla and former Adm. Emilio Massera–a fellow junta tyrant–also faced charges of devising “amilitary plan to hand over children [of]…slain dissidents to members of the armed forces,” according to anarticle published that year by Reuters. The outcome of that charge is not immediately clear.
And as we now know, the Argentine junta worked with the tacit approval of the Ford Administration.
“Newly declassified documents show [U.S.] Secretary of State gave green light to junta, contradict official linethat Argentines ‘heard only what [they] wanted to hear,’ ” stated the watchdog group National Security Archive in 2003.
According to the verbatim transcript of a memoranda of conversation between U.S. Secretary of State HenryKissinger and the visiting Argentine foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger interruptedGuzzetti’s report on the Argentina situation and said:
“Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better… The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won’t cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.”
