By Ryan C. Kossler

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – Former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry was sentenced to thirty years in prison on Wednesday for leading a military coup in Uruguay in 1973 and for nine forced disappearances and two homicides.  Eighty-one year old Bordaberry was sentenced by Judge Mariana Motta for violating the constitution by shutting down Congress fifteen months after taking office in early 1972 and of rights violations in the other two cases involving disappearances and murders.

Bordaberry, who was already serving a thirty year sentence under house arrest, was first arrested in 2006 for the 1976 slayings in Buenos Aires of exiled Uruguayan lawmakers Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz and Uruguayan leftist militants Rosario Barredo and William Whitelaw.  Bordaberry testified that he only heard about the disappearances twenty years after his presidency and that while in office, he kept himself removed from the actions carried out by the military. 

According to the prosecutor, Ana Maria Tellechea, this does not appear to be the case.  Tellechea said, “it has been clearly shown that in the period from the coup until Bordaberry was removed by the military there were hundreds of disappearances and torture-related deaths carried out by those at the head of [Bordaberry’s] dictatorial process.”

Attorney Hebe Martines Burle, who filed the charges against Bordaberry, said that even though the sentences will not affect Bordaberry’s status in terms of years in detention, it has enormous symbolic importance for Uruguay.  Burle said “This doesn’t change the time of reclusion at all and that’s not our concern.  The issue for us is emblematic, symbolic, that when someone violates the constitution, when a coup occurs, eventually you’re going to pay.”

Bordaberry is the second Uruguayan dictator sentenced to a lengthy prison term in the last four months.  Gregorio Alvarez was jailed for twenty-five years last October for murder and rights violations during his 1981-1985 rule.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Former Uruguay Dictator Bordaberry gets ‘30yrs Jail – 11 February 2010

America’s Quarterly – Former Uruguayan Dictator Sentenced – 11 February 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune – Former Uruguayan Dictator Gets 30-Year Prison Sentence for Coup  – 11 February 2010