Jorge Rafael Videla, an austere former army commander who led Argentina during the bloodiest period of a “dirty war” dictatorship and was unrepentant about kidnappings and murders ordered by the state, died at 87. Videla was the first president to head the military junta that “disappeared” thousands of suspected leftists from 1976 to 1983, and he spent his final years behind bars for human rights crimes including the systematic theft of babies born to political prisoners in secret torture centers. He died of natural causes in his jail cell in a prison outside the capital, Buenos Aires, a government spokesman said. “Videla presided over a government that engaged in one of the cruelest repressions that we have seen in Latin America in modern times,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of Latin America for US-based Human Rights Watch. “He was arrogant to the end and unwilling to acknowledge his responsibility for the massive atrocities committed in Argentina,” Vivanco added. “Many of the secrets of the repression have died with him,” he said.
