ARGENTINA’S last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, and 14 others have been jailed for their role in the Operation Condor programme of continent-wide repression.

Former general Mr Bignone, the last ruler of the military junta from 1982 to 1983, was sentenced to 20 years on Friday for being part of an illicit association, kidnapping and abusing his powers in the forced disappearance of more than 100 people.

The other 14 officers received sentences of between eight and 25 years each for criminal association, kidnapping and torture. 

They included Uruguayan army colonel, Manuel Cordero Piacentini, accused of torturing prisoners inside Automotores Orletti, the Buenos Aires repair shop where many captured leftists were interrogated under orders from their home countries.

A further two were acquitted.The verdict was the first time a court had concluded that the co-ordinated programme of killings and disappearances was carried out by the US-backed regimes in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

A key piece of evidence in the case was a declassified FBI agent’s cable sent in 1976 that described in detail the conspiracy to share intelligence and eliminate leftists across South America.

Between 30,000 and 80,000 leftwingers were murdered or disappeared under the wave of repression from 1968 to 1989, although 1975 is given as the year of its formal launch.

Pacifist Argentinian Nobel laureate Adolfo Perez refused to celebrate the verdict, saying: “Plan Condor should never have happened.”

Chilean journalist and diplomat Odette Magnet, whose sister Maria Cecilia was among the disappeared, said: “Justice was achieved but we need the truth.

“I want to know where they are, where (the death squads) threw them, where all the victims of this macabre plan are,” said Ms Magnet, who has campaigned for 40 years for the truth.