Saturday, April 16, 2011

Sentenced to life imprisonment former Argentine dictator Reynaldo Bignone

Argentina A court on Thursday sentenced to life imprisonment Reynaldo Bignone former dictator for crimes against humanity at the expense of ten victims of the last military regime (1976-1983), judicial sources said. The penalty was imposed by the Federal Court in January of the locality of San Martín, in 2010 and was sentenced to Bignone to 25 years in prison for crimes of repression committed in the military garrison of Campo de Mayo, which housed four centers torture and motherhood.

The court also sentenced to life imprisonment to former military Santiago Omar Riveros and Martin Rodriguez, and former deputy Luis Patti, who worked at the police of Buenos Aires city of Escobar, while sentenced to six years imprisonment to former Commissioner Juan Fernando Meneghini. For them, the judges ordered to serve their sentences in an ordinary prison.

Reading the ruling, witnessed only by Meneghini, was greeted with applause by members of human rights organizations that joined in the courtroom and those who were stationed in front of the courthouse. To celebrate, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, one of the complainants in this process, called a recital of the group 'Los Autenticos Decadentes.

" The Argentine Human Rights Secretary Eduardo Luis Duhalde, welcomed the verdict and praised the conditions of the court in San Martin. "This is a high-ranking court of law which has now proceeded in line with his prestige and wisdom," he said. For Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, "Today is a historic day for all Argentines good." "Many countries are increasingly looking at respect for Argentina because we have the flags of truth and justice for the 30,000 (missing)," he said.

Hours before the sentencing, Reynaldo Bignone, 83, made use of the right to his last stand and found that civil justice was "not competent" to judge. The last president of the dictatorship (1982-1983) held that should have been tried by a military court. Both Riveros, Meneghini and Patti, who was hospitalized last year by a stroke, refused to speak to the court in Buenos Aires.

Allegations during the trial stage, which began last September, prosecutors and the complaints had requested life imprisonment for the five defendants. The court, composed of judges Larrandart Lucila, Marta Milloc and Horacio Sagretti, addressed in the process, which attracted a hundred witnesses, the kidnapping and murder of former guerrilla Gaston Goncalves and former national deputy Diego Muniz Barreto, arrested on a illegal Escobar, among others.

Gaston Goncalves, the disbanded militant group Montoneros, was abducted on March 24, 1976, the day of the coup that inaugurated the dictatorship, and his body was found April 2 that year. A year later he was kidnapped on Escobar's former deputy Muniz Barreto, who after going through several secret prisons was introduced sedated in a car and thrown into a river to simulate an accident.

Patti, who followed the trial from an ambulance stationed in front of the auditorium, he entered politics in 1991 by then president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) and after being mayor won a seat as deputy for the right-wing Federalist Unity Party in 2005. However, the parliamentary groups and opposition official in his day endorsed a ruling that prevented taking office.

In addition to addressing this process, Bignone is one of eight defendants in a trial that began last February by 35 cases of theft of babies during the dictatorship, which left 30,000 missing.

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