Member of 1976-1983 Argentine junta dies

Buenos Aires, Agency
Retired Adm. Emilio Eduardo Massera, a member of the ruling junta during the bloodiest phase of Argentina's 1976-1983 military regime, died Monday at the naval hospital in Buenos Aires. He was 85.

Massera, who had long suffered from dementia and heart problems, spent the final dozen years of his life under house arrest.

Doctors said the cause of death was cardio-respiratory failure caused by a cerebral hemorrhage.

Massera and the other top leaders of the dictatorship were sentenced in 1985 to life in prison for crimes against humanity, but walked out of jail five years later thanks to pardons granted by then-President Carlos Menem.

In Massera's case, however, neither the pardon nor two broad amnesty laws approved in the late 1980s protected him from a 1998 indictment for one of the junta's most scandalous crimes: stealing the babies of political prisoners for adoption by families with ties to the military regime.

Though that prosecution was halted in 2005 after doctors concluded Massera was too ill to assist in his defense, court decisions overturning the 1990 pardons ensured that the admiral remained under house arrest.

His death ends a trial in absentia in Rome against Massera for the disappearance of three Italian citizens in Argentina during the dictatorship.

He was also wanted by Germany, Spain and Switzerland for crimes committed against those countries' citizens as part of the junta's "dirty war" against the left.

The military regime killed some 13,000 people, according to official figures, while human rights groups say the true death toll is closer to 30,000.

A declassified U.S. government document mentions a 1978 report from Chilean intelligence citing an official figure from the junta of nearly 23,000 dead in the first 2 1/2 years of military rule.