Jorge Rafael Videla [SEP] position held
Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla (; ; August 2, 1925 – May 17, 2013) was a senior commander in the Argentine Army and dictator of Argentina from 1976 to 1981.
He came to power in "a coup d'état" that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón. In 1985, two years after the return of a representative democratic government, he was prosecuted in the Trial of the Juntas for large-scale human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that took place under his rule, including kidnappings or forced disappearance
, who were arrested by the governments of Juan Perón in 1974 and his wife Isabel Perón in 1975. Thus, they were already "on the books" when Jorge Rafael Videla came into power in 1976 (incidentally, Videla was held for 38 days in the old prison during one of his brief incarcerations after the fall of the dictatorship). Because the political prisoners were registered with international human rights groups, it was more difficult to simply kill them or "disappear" them, as the military regime was doing with thousands