Buenos Aires
Justice for disappeared: An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their roles in Operation Condor, a conspiracy among six right-wing South American dictatorships to assassinate dissidents in the 1970s and ’80s. Only one of those convicted, former Uruguayan naval officer Jorge Néstor Troccoli, lives in Italy. The rest—including former Peruvian President Francisco Morales Bermúdez, 97—were convicted in absentia and are unlikely to see the inside of a prison. Still, families of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victims feel vindicated. “Today’s ruling is dedicated to all the people killed and kidnapped under Condor,” said Aurora Meloni, whose husband, Daniel Banfi, was kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires in 1974. At the time, the U.S. assisted the military governments of all six countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.