Uruguay president apologizes for dirty war death
Mar 21, 2012, 8:45 PM
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) – Uruguay’s President Jose Mujica has accepted the government’s responsibility for the death of an Argentine woman during the so-called dirty wars of the 1970s.
Mujica says the act complies with a ruling by the Inter-American Human Rights Court in the case of Maria Claudia Garcia. She was the daughter-in-law of Argentine poet Juan Gelman and the case has become emblematic of deadly cooperation between the military dictatorships of Uruguay and Argentina.
Garcia was a 19-year-old leftist when Argentine security forces arrested her in 1976. She was moved secretly to Uruguay, where she gave birth in a military hospital before dying in custody. Her remains have not been found. Her daughter attended Wednesday’s ceremony.
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