Argentinian 'Dirty War' general Menendez dies aged 90

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One of Argentina's top military chiefs during the brutal "Dirty War" dictatorship era, in which some 30,000 people disappeared, died on Tuesday, local media reported.

Luciano Benjamin Menendez, known as "the Hyena" and "Jackal," ran the infamous La Perla concentration camp, where thousands of opponents of the 1976-1983 military regime were tortured.

He died on Tuesday of liver disease at a Cordoba military hospital, aged 90, the official Telam news agency reported.

Menendez had been sentenced to prison in 14 cases over the past few years – 13 of them to life behind bars – and was awaiting the start of a 15th trial.

He denied however that there was any persecution of political opponents during the country's dictatorship-era, saying the conflict was a war against "Marxist rebels."

Handout photo released by Argentine judicial officials on August, 2003 of Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) members working in a common grave in Cordoba province, Argentina, where they found unidentified bodies presumed to belong to opponents murdered during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. /‍VCG Photo

Menendez headed the III Army Corps based in the industrial city of Cordoba, Argentina's second most populous city and at the time a center of labor unrest.

The late general, who showed no sign of remorse during his trials, was so hardline he dismissed other generals like the late dictator Jorge Rafael Videla as "soft" on the opposition.

Menendez and other regime officials accused of human rights violations faced a wave of lawsuits when a blanket amnesty for dictatorship-era officials was fully rescinded in 2005.

During the seven-year "Dirty War," the Argentine military killed an estimated 30,000 dissidents, many of them tied to labor unions or leftists groups. Many of the victims were never found.

"Unlike his victims, we know the time and place of his death, and his family could bid him farewell," the group HIJOS, representing children of dictatorship-era victims, said in a social media posting following news of Menendez's death.

(Top picture: Members of the human rights group "Madres de Plaza de Mayo" hold posters denouncing high-ranking members of the military who committed crimes during the "Dirty War" in this file picture. /VCG Photo)

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Source(s): AP ,AFP