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Last military leader from Argentina's "Dirty War" sentenced to life in prison
Buenos Aires, Argentina (Reuters) - The last leader of Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday (April 14) along with three other former military and police officers for their involvement in murders, torture, unlawful imprisonment, disappearances and other human rights crimes during the dictatorship era.
Audience members in the packed Buenos Aires courtroom erupted into shouts and cheers upon hearing the sentences of 83-year-old former Argentine de facto military President Reynaldo Bignone and 58-year-old former Buenos Aires police commissioner Luis Patti. The judges sentenced both men to life in a federal penitentiary, rejecting the option of house arrest.
A former general, Santiago Omar Riveros, and former army intelligence agent, Martin Rodriguez, were also given life in prison in what was seen as a victory for human rights groups. Jubilant members of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo wore their symbolic head scarves in the courtroom.
A fifth man, former Escobar Police Commissioner Juan Fernando Meneghini sat quietly in the courtroom as the sentences were read by Judges Lucila Larrandart, Horacio Segretti and Maria Lucia Cassain.
Meneghini was given six years in prison; the crimes tried were carried out in or near Escobar, his jurisdiction at the time, north of capital Buenos Aires.
Argentine Human Rights Secretary Eduardo Luis Duhalde said the punishments fit the crimes adding that sending the convicted to federal prisons and not house arrest was a move away from past impunity laws.
Family members of victims killed or disappeared by the accused celebrated the court's decision chanting and clapping inside the courtroom after the session.
Patti is accused of overseeing the kidnapping and subsequent murder of leftist militant Gaston Goncalvez, the father of an Argentine musician of the same name from the group Los Pericos.
The military took the musician's brother and gave him to another family for adoption. He only found out his true identity years later thanks to the work of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group that is dedicated to looking for misplaced children from the dictatorship years.
His brother, Manuel Goncalvez is one of 103 'grandchildren' recuperated by the Grandmothers.
Many of the junta's top leaders are under house arrest on charges of kidnapping babies born to mothers held in captivity during military rule.
Bignone was the last of four military de facto presidents in Argentina under the dictatorship, which ended in 1983 amid a deep economic crisis and a humiliating defeat in the war against Britain over the Falkland Islands.
More than 11,000 people died or disappeared during Argentina's "Dirty War," a systematic crackdown on leftists and other opponents of the military regime. Human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000.
The ruling was the latest by courts that have found new impetus for bringing former dictatorship officials to justice after Argentina's Supreme Court -- at the urging of former President Nestor Kirchner -- struck down two amnesty laws in 2005 that shielded them from charges of human rights abuses.