Ten sentenced to life imprisonment for assault in Argentina – NRK Urix – Foreign news and documentaries

In addition to the 10 life sentences, one person was sentenced to 25 years in prison when the ruling was handed down on Tuesday. Six other defendants died during the three years that the trial lasted.

One of the main defendants, Miguel Echicolaz, was already serving a life sentence when he died in 2022, at the age of 93.

They were convicted of disappearances, torture and rape committed during Argentina's military dictatorship.

The defendants, all of whom say they are innocent, include prison guards, police officers, doctors from the police and army and a former state minister.

He had to have an abortion

The cases that have now reached a verdict involve more than 400 victims, who were held in three of the country's hundreds of notorious secret detention centers.

Among the victims were 23 pregnant women, according to the human rights organization Mødrene på Mai-plassen.

Some women were forced to have abortions, while others disappeared. Ten of the children the women had had were taken from them and handed over to families friendly to the regime.

Most of them did not discover their true origin until many years later.

Whitewashing of history

The ruling comes at a time when the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 is once again part of the political debate in Argentina.

The country's new president, Javier Miley, described the 1970s as a period of “war” between the government and leftist rebels – albeit accompanied by abuse – rather than a period of dictatorship.

He also questions estimates by human rights groups that indicate that 30,000 people have been killed or disappeared. Miley prefers to deal with the number of 9,000 victims, which historians describe as a whitewashing of history.

After the resumption of legal procedures in 2006 – after a while pardon In the 1990s, 1,176 people were sentenced, while 79 cases are still ongoing and 667 people are in detention, judiciary figures show.