Former Dictator Dies, Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentinian Dictator Famous For "Disappeared" Students And Pregnant Mothers, Dies

A former dictator has died.  Jorge Rafael Videla, former Argentinian dictator, has died in prison of natural causes.

Videla was serving a life sentence in prison for crimes against humanity. Videla took power in 1976 following a coup that ousted the previous regime and led a junta that killed countless Argentines to eliminate "subversives".

Federal Prison Service Director Victor Hortel told press that Videla had died of natural causes in the Marcos Paz prison.

Videla was notorious, in part, because he took full responsibility for his actions, even bragging about them. He was tried multiple times in recent years for his crimes and said he knew about everything that happened while he was the ruler because "I was on top of everyone."

He also introduced new concepts to global regimes-"disappeared" or "disappeareds," citizens who were kidnapped and never heard from or seen again, and "death flights," in which political prisoners were thrown alive from navy planes into the ocean.

"The disappeareds aren't there, they don't exist," Videla told a news conference in 1977.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo stood on the plaza every day, demanding that attention be paid to Videla's crimes. They still stand there today, thirty years later, waiting for their missing children to come back.

While Videla's dictatorship was just one in a decade of dictatorships throughout South America, it was also one of the bloodiest. He targeted students and intellectuals in particular, causing much of an entire generation in Venezuela to become "disappeared". He had a policy of imprisoning pregnant female prisoners until they gave birth to their babies, then killing the mothers and having the babies adopted. The illegal adoptions were usually made by wealthy police or military families.  Last year, Videla was convicted for the thefts of these babies, which the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo fought to have returned. He was sentenced to another term of life without parole.