Uruguay minister sacked over dictatorship-era scandal

MONTEVIDEO: Uruguay’s President Tabare Vazquez sacked his defence minister and the chief of the army Monday over links to a scandal dating from the Latin Amercan country’s 1970s dictatorship, local media reported.

Vazquez dismissed Defence Minister Jorge Menendez and army chief General Jose Gonzalez after a newspaper detailed the evidence of a former intelligence officer given before a secret military tribunal.

Convicted torturer Jose Gavazzo acknowledged to the tribunal last year that in 1973 he threw the body of a dissident, Roberto Gomensoro, into Uruguay’s Rio Negro.

The government is facing intense criticism for failing to pass on the tribunal’s findings to the judiciary, so that Gavazzo could be tried in open court and the full circumstances of Gomensoro’s murder made public.

Uruguay was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1973 to 1985 during which many mainly leftist opponents of the regime, like Gomensoro, were imprisoned and tortured. Some were forcibly ‘disappeared’.

The government made no official announcement about the dismissals, but two members of Vazquez’s governing coalition confirmed the sackings.

Also dismissed Monday were deputy defence minister Daniel Montiel, and two army generals.

Uruguay’s state prosecutor Jorge Diaz said on Twitter that he had passed on to prosecutors “the open source information about the failure to report the facts and the circumstances of the murder of Roberto Gomensoro Josman reported to the Army Court Martial by the prisoner Jose Gavazzo.” Vazquez appointed Gonzalez head of the army only two weeks ago.

He replaced the previous army chief, Guido Manini Rios, after he had criticised the judiciary.

Around 180 people are known to have been killed by the regime, and many were never found.

Commemorated annually in Uruguay, they are referred to as the ‘disappeared.’ Gomensoro is known as the first of Uruguay’s ‘disappeared’.

It is the second major scandal in two years for Vazquez, whose mandate ends later this year.

Vice-president Raul Sendic was forced to step down in 2017 over accusations of embezzlement and abuse of power. — AFP