Cels / For the first time a court rules that #OperationCondor was a criminal conspiracy

30.5.16

Cels: Argentine Federal Tribunal No.1 ruled today that Operation Condor was a criminal conspiracy to kidnap and disappear people across international borders. The scope of the Operation was proven in its full magnitude. For many different reasons this trial had unique characteristics and was of great regional importance: due to the sheer number of evidentiary documents involved; the hundreds of testimonies given by witnesses either in person or via videoconference from their countries of residence; and the vast group of people who were victims of the plan, which included political, social, trade union and student activists of various nationalities. All of this made it possible to prove the existence of a formal system of repressive coordination between the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

In its verdict, the court determined that the accused were part of that criminal system and were responsible for some specific Condor operations. For these reasons the tribunal sentenced Santiago Omar Riveros and former Uruguayan military official Manuel Juan Cordero Piacentini to 25 years in prison. Reynaldo Benito Bignone and Rodolfo Emilio Feroglio to 20 years. Humberto Jos� Ram�n Lobaiza to 18 years. Antonio Va�ek, Eugenio Gua�abens Perell� and Enrique Braulio Olea to 13 years. Luis Sadi Pepa, N�stor Horacio Falc�n, Eduardo Samuel Del�o, Felipe Jorge Alespeiti and Carlos Humberto Caggiano Tedesco to 12 years. And Federico Antonio Minicucci was sentenced to 8 years in prison.