Videla was serving life imprisonment for human rights violations, including kidnap, torture and murder, during what the dictatorship called “the Dirty War” against opponents.
As an army general, Videla led the March 1976 coup that toppled the government of Maria Estela Martinez de Peron. Under the regime, an estimated 30,000 people disappeared, presumed dead, and thousands of others were tortured, according to human rights groups. Some were thrown out of airplanes over the Rio de la Plata estuary.
“Unfortunately, he died without confessing,” Estela Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group, told CN23 television channel today. “He never allowed us to recover the corpses of our sons that they killed, nor our grandsons that are alive.”
Source: Bloomberg