Dictator admits ‘disappearing’ leftist rivals

Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the country’s brutal 1976-83 dictatorship “disappeared” leftist opponents, a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered, and said that babies were taken from their parents.

Videla, 86, who was jailed for life in 2010 for murder, torture, and kidnapping, has repeatedly justified the brutality of the military junta in the “Dirty War” crackdown on left-wing opponents. Until now, he had denied the forced disappearances.

Videla admitted in interviews for a new book that the dictatorship killed 7,000 or 8,000 people. “In every war people are crippled, killed and disappeared, their whereabouts unknown, that is a fact,” he said in an interview on local television.