Reynaldo Bignone

Reynaldo Bignone (1982)

Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón (born January 21, 1928 in Morón , Buenos Aires , Argentina , † March 7, 2018 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine general . He was de facto President of the Republic of Argentina from July 1, 1982 to December 10, 1983 .

Life

Bignone trained at the Colegio Militar de la Nación and embarked on a military career. He was one of the leading figures in the military coup that ushered in the Argentine military dictatorship and was involved in a number of crimes. General Bignone became head of the military junta in 1982 after his predecessor Leopoldo Galtieri resigned after Argentina's defeat in the Falklands War against Great Britain. His reign did not last long, because after the defeat in the war for the Falkland Islands, the call for democracy in the population grew louder. General Bignone tried bit by bit to return to democracy, but at the same time through appropriate legislation to prevent future investigations into the human rights violations that had occurred during the military dictatorship 1976-1983 . A dirty war had been waged against the opposition then. However, this request was rejected by the political parties, which paved the way for trials against the junta generals, who were initiated by the democratically elected President Raúl Alfonsín after the military rule .

At the beginning of 1999, the judiciary dealt with the kidnapping of children of abducted or murdered parents. In this context, Bignone was also tried and convicted. However, out of consideration for his old age, he was not arrested, but only placed under house arrest.

Acceptance of Bignone's picture in the Colegio Militar de la Nación 2004 (left Kirchner )

After the change of government in 2003, President Néstor Kirchner made the social and criminal investigation of dictatorship crimes a top priority. On March 24, 2004, in the presence of Kirchner, Bignone's picture was removed from the national officers' college of Argentina, the Colegio Militar de la Nación , which was still there in a gallery among the official portraits. Bignone was arrested in March 2007 and subsequently held in a military base near Buenos Aires; on November 2, 2009 the trial against him was opened. A federal court in San Martín sentenced Bignone to 25 years imprisonment on April 20, 2010 for human rights crimes. As a former commandant of the Campo de Mayo military base , which contained a torture prison during the military dictatorship, he is complicit in the kidnapping, torture and murder of 56 people. Together with Bignone, five ex-officers were sentenced to long prison terms.

On December 29, 2011, Bignone was sentenced to 15 years in prison for human rights violations. The Federal Court 2 in Buenos Aires found the 83-year-old guilty of depriving 15 people in the Posadas hospital. The clinic is located in the east of the Argentine capital.

A few days after the coup d'état in 1976, Bignone had personally led the military occupation of the hospital at the head of a force with helicopters and tanks. The director and 14 other people are said to have been arrested and tortured. Eleven members of the medical and administrative staff were murdered during the military dictatorship (1976–83). However, the murders are being investigated in a different trial. Besides Bignone, former brigadier Hipolito Rafael Mariani was sentenced to eight years in prison.

At the beginning of July 2012, Bignone and Jorge Videla were held legally responsible for the multiple child robberies committed on detained opponents of the regime during the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. The federal court in Buenos Aires sentenced Bignone to 15 years in prison. At the end of May 2016, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison for participating in more than one hundred murders as part of Operation Condor .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Murió Reynaldo Bignone, el último presidente de la dictadura , accessed on March 7, 2018
2. ↑ Argentine ex-dictator Bignone has died , accessed on March 7, 2018
3. ↑ The Argentine dictator comes to court ( Memento of February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 816 kB) Kommunikation Global, 8, 2007, no.3, p. 26
4. ↑ Militares pidieron el retiro por medida de Kirchner (March 24, 2004) on the pages of www.terra.com.ar (Spanish; accessed October 12, 2007); Short video recording of the acceptance of the pictures by Bignone and Videla from a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (accessed October 12, 2007)
5. ^ Argentina's last military dictator on trial , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 3, 2009.
6. ↑ The last dictator has to go to prison ( memento of April 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) tagesschau.de, April 21, 2010
7. ↑ Bignone deberá pasar 25 años en una cárcel común , Página / 12, April 20, 2010 (Spanish).
8. ↑ Argentina: Ex-dictators Videla and Bignone convicted of baby robbery at zeit.de, July 6, 2012 (accessed on July 6, 2012).
9. ↑ South American military dictatorships: Argentina condemns the military for "Plan Cóndor". Spiegel Online, May 27, 2016, accessed on the same day

Web links

Commons : Reynaldo Bignone  - Collection of Images

• Guido Braslavsky: Recuerdos de una interna salvaje . In: Clarín , Buenos Aires, December 20, 1998 (Interview Reynaldo Bignone after the Falklands War; Spanish).

predecessor	Office	successor
Alfredo Saint Jean	Leader of the Argentine Military Regime 1982–1983	Raúl Alfonsín (democratically elected President)