Former Argentine generals sentenced to life

Senator Guillermo Vargas Aignasse, a Peronist, became one of tens of thousands of the disappeared, victims of political repression by the Argentine military that lasted from 1976 until the junta fell following the disastrous Malvinas War in 1983. The countrys military rulers waged a vast program designed to terrorize the working class and eliminate political opposition. There were 30,000 dead and disappeared, that is people detained by authorities, missing for decades, and presumed dead. Some of the prisoners of the junta were dumped into the sea from airplanes, falling to their death over open water. There were in total more than one million victims of the repression, many of whom were subjected to cruel and depraved torture by their police or military captors.

Convicted in the case were Antonio Bussi, 82, who was governor of Tucuman province and an army general, and his co-defendant, army general Luciano Menendez, 81. Together they were responsible not just for the death of one senator, but for the disappearance, murder and torture of thousands of people in the impoverished northern province of Tucuman, which was one of the first areas in which the nightmarish repression unleashed under the junta was first tried out, even before the military had taken power.

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