Jorge Rafael Videla

Argentinian dictator; Born: August 2, 1925; Died: May 17, 2013.

JORGE Rafael Videla, who has died aged 87, took power in Argentina in a 1976 coup and led a military junta that killed thousands of his fellow citizens in a dirty war to eliminate people considered to be subversives. He died while serving life in prison for crimes against humanity.

Videla ran one of the bloodiest military governments during South America’s era of dictatorships and sought to take full responsibility for kidnappings, tortures, deaths and disappearances when he was tried for these crimes. He said he knew about everything that happened under his rule because “I was on top of everyone”.

He was born in Mercedes, a town in Buenos Aires province. His father, Lt Col Rafael Videla, participated in an earlier coup that toppled President Hipolito Yrigoyen in 1930. He went to Argentina’s military college, became a general in 1971 and was designated commander of the army in 1976.

He had a low profile before the March 24, 1976, coup, but became the architect of a system that killed about 9000 people, according to an official accounting after democracy returned in 1983. Human rights activists believe the real number was as high as 30,000.

This dirty war introduced two frightening terms to the lexicon of terror: “disappeareds” (people kidnapped and never seen or heard from again) and “death flights,” in which political prisoners were thrown, drugged but alive, from navy planes into the sea.

His dictatorship stood out from others in Latin America for its policy of holding pregnant prisoners until they gave birth, then killing the women while arranging for illegal adoptions of their babies, usually by military or police families. This happened hundreds of times, and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo rights group has sought to reunite these children, now in their 30s, with their families. Last year he was convicted and sentenced again, to a 50year term, for the theft of these babies.

His regime, the Process of National Reorganisation, fought against armed leftist guerrillas, but these movements were already weakened and nearly destroyed at the time of the coup. The junta pursued political opponents, union members, student activists and social workers.

The process spread as the junta joined Operation Condor, an effort launched by Chile’s dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, to make sure the countries of South American’s southern cone provided no refuge to each other’s leftist enemies. Paraguay’s dictator Alfredo Stroessner joined the pact, as did the leaders of Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. Secret documents released decades later showed US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was kept informed.

The high point of his regime came in 1978 when Argentina hosted the football World Cup. Just a few streets from the River Plate stadium, where Argentina won the cup, detainees were tortured inside the Navy Mechanics School.

Videla retired in 1981 and handed leadership to a succession of other generals.

The dictators then launched an illadvised war against Britain for the Falkland Islands. That military defeat hastened the return of democracy on December 12, 1983.

President Carlos Menem pardoned Videla in 1990 and he was free until 1998, when a judge charged him with his involvement in the baby thefts. He spent a month in prison before asserting the right that Argentines aged over 70 should remain under house arrest pending trial.

In 2010 Videla was condemned to life in prison for killing 31 political dissidents and ordered to serve the time in common prison. The baby thefts conviction, with its 50-year sentence, was handed down in 2012.

Videla served only five years in prison after his right to serve his time at home because of his advanced age was revoked in 2008.

He married Alicia Raquel Hartridge in 1948 and had seven children.