Reynaldo Bignone - Epilogue

Epilogue

Presiding over a difficult six years, President Raúl Alfonsín advanced the Trial of the Juntas in 1985, proceedings which acquitted Bignone of responsibility, but left civil trials against him open. These, however, were precluded by decrees signed by Alfonsín himself in early 1987, the result of pressure from the Armed Forces.

Bignone in 1993 authored a reflection on his brief tenure, El último de facto (The Last De Facto President or The truly last one), to condemnation over the book's marginalizing of Dirty War abuses. He was again placed at the disposal of the courts in January 1999, after the reopening of trials for misappropriation of children. Under house arrest in October 2006, a consideration accorded him on account of his advanced age, he was arrested in March 2007 and taken into custody at a military base outside Buenos Aires as part of an investigation into past human rights abuses, including the atrocities at the Posadas Hospital and complicity in the trafficking of infants abducted from the roughly 500 pregnant women who were among the disappeared. These were ruled to have no statute of limitations owing their nature as crimes against humanity.

On 20 April 2010, Bignone was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his involvement in the kidnapping, torture and murder of 56 people, including guerrilla fighters, at the extermination center that worked in the Campo de Mayo military complex. On April, 2011, Reynaldo Bignone was sentenced to life in prison.

On 29 December 2011 Bignone received a further 15-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity for setting up a secret torture center inside a hospital during the 1976 military coup.

On July 5, 2012, Bignone was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his participation in a scheme to steal babies from parents detained by the military regime. According to the court decision, Bignone was an accomplice "in the crimes of theft, retention and hiding of minors, as well as replacing their identities."