Former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, one of South America’s bloodiest military rulers, returned to court as a defendant yesterday for the first time since he was convicted of crimes against humanity 25 years ago.
Videla, 84, is being tried for the murders of 31 political prisoners who were pulled from their jail cells shortly after his 1976 military coup and, according to the official story, shot while trying to escape.
Considered the architect of Argentina’s Dirty War that resulted in as many as 30,000 deaths during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, Videla was sentenced to life in prison for torture, murder and other crimes in 1985, then pardoned five years later by then-Argentine president Carlos Menem.
The Supreme Court struck down the pardon in 2007, restoring his convictions, and since then dozens of other cases have accumulated against Videla.
The case in Cordoba is the first to reach trial; at least two more are scheduled to start this year, including one involving dozens of babies stolen from prisoners who were later killed.
What distinguishes the Cordoba case from others is that its victims had been jailed under the civilian government before the coup, and were executed before they could stand trial, attorney Miguel Ceballos said.
Ceballos is representing the families of victims, including his own father: Miguel Angel Ceballos was active in the People’s Revolutionary Army, a leftist guerrilla group, when he was arrested in 1974 for violating anti-subversion laws.
“They shot him in a ravine a few blocks from the jail along with other prisoners,” Ceballos said. “When they came looking for my father at the prison, he knew he would be killed. He said goodbye to his friends and left a photo of our family so they could tell us what had happened.”
The body was delivered to the family shortly thereafter. The other victims, leftists between 21 and 45 years old, were killed in similar fashion — “shot while trying to escape” — in the months after the coup on March 24, 1976.
Videla and military leaders formed a junta that eliminated political parties, took over unions, censored the media and tortured and killed thousands of “subversives” — actions the junta justified as necessary to fight communism.
Videla’s fellow defendants include former army General Luciano Benjamin Menendez, who led the campaign against subversives in a wide swath of Argentina, 22 other retired military and police officials and some civilians.
Ceballos said Videla, as army commander and president of the junta, was the one who gave the order to eliminate all leftist activists.
“I knew everything that happened. I was above everyone,” Videla himself told the authors of his 2001 biography, The Dictator.
At the height of his power, Videla dismissed concerns about the thousands of people who had vanished.
“The disappeared do not exist,” he said in a 1977 news conference in Venezuela.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese