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April 16, 2012

Ex-Argentine Dictator Acknowledges Deaths, Disappearances 
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Former Argentine dictator General Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for
the first time that critics of his regime were disappeared during
Argentina's Dirty War. General Videla led the military coup which
unseated President Isabela Peron in 1976. The 86-year-old Videla is now
serving a life sentence for murder, torture and kidnapping. In a recent
interview he admitted that the dictatorship killed up to 8,000 people.

Jorge Rafael Videla: "In every war, there are crippled, killed and
disappeared whose whereabouts are unknown. This is a fact. This is the
fact, but how many were there can be debated. The problem does not lie
in the number, but in the fact— a fact which occurs in every
war— that we allowed the pejorative term of disappeared—
that could have been necessary at one time but later, stayed on as a
term to cover up something dark that was wanted to be kept secret."

 

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