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Ex-dictator sentenced

Reynaldo Bignone, the last military president in Argentina's dictatorship, was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for the forced disappearance of more than 100 people during the Operation Condor conspiracy to hunt down dissidents across South America.

In the landmark trial, 14 other former military officials received prison sentences of eight to 25 years for criminal association, kidnapping and torture. Two of the accused were absolved.

Operation Condor was launched in the 1970s by six South American dictators who used their secret police networks in a co-ordinated effort to hunt down their leftists and opponents across the region and eliminate them. Some leftist dissidents had fled to exile in neighbouring countries.

Bignone, 88, was accused of being part of an illicit association, kidnapping and abusing his powers in office. The former general who ruled Argentina in 1982-1983 is already serving life sentences for multiple human rights violations during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

Friday's sentences are seen as a milestone because they mark the first time a court has proved that the criminal conspiracy called Operation Condor was carried out by the dictators of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

"Operation Condor affected my life, my family," Chilean Laura Elgueta told The Associated Press outside the court room. Her brother, Luis Elgueta, was forcibly dissapeared in Buenos Aires in 1976 as part of Operation Condor.

"This trial is very meaningful because it's the first time that a court is ruling against this sinister Condor plan."

A key piece of evidence in the case was a declassified FBI agent's cable, sent in 1976, that described in detail the conspiracy to share intelligence and eliminate leftists across South America.

Operation Condor was launched in November 1975 by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet who enlisted other dictators. But the covert program went much further: the U.S. government later determined that Chilean agents involved in Condor killed the country's former ambassador Orlando Letelier and his U.S. aide Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C., in September 1976.

Operation Condor's agents also tracked other exiles across Europe in efforts to eliminate them.



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