This policy brief is based on a multi-year study carried out between 2013 and 2016 on accountability for Plan Cóndor crimes and, in particular, two knowledge exchange workshops, in which academics, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, policy experts and members of civil society from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay participated. The brief highlights the main challenges and obstacles that have delayed and slowed down the elucidation of past transnational atrocities in South America. It also sets out three recommendations to overcome these hindrances across the region.

In May 2016, an Argentine federal court concluded a transcendental trial in which it condemned 15 suspects for having illegally captured and tortured more than 100 victims of Operation Condor, as well as for the crime of illicit association. Operation Condor was the code name given to a secret plan that spread across an entire continent, devised by the South American regimes during the 1970s to eliminate hundreds of leftist activists throughout the region.

This policy brief is based on a long-term study of accountability policies in this region. It also draws upon the discussion and knowledge exchange held during the workshop “Investigating Crimes against Humanity in South America: Present and Future Challenges,” organized by the University of Oxford and Argentina’s Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Humanity, held in Buenos Aires in May 2018. The brief summarizes the main challenges and difficulties associated with investigating crimes against humanity in South America.

This chapter first examines the key points of the reasoning behind the sentence of appeal of the Condor trial in Rome pronounced in July 2019. It particularly focuses on the analysis by the judges with respect to the responsibility of medium and low-ranking commands. Secondly, it reviews how the lawyers of the trial evaluated the reasoning before finally emphasising the importance of the said verdict in terms of the fight against impunity on a global level and in Uruguay.

This specialist report was written by Dr. Francesca Lessa following the resolution of the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on 24th March 2021. In this document, Dr. Lessa unpacks six innovative aspects of Operation Condor, placing a particular focus on the victims. The analysis stems from the database on the victims of repressive coordination in South America between 1969 and 1981, alongside new declassified documents.

This article analyzes the sentence of Rome’s Supreme Court of Cassation in July 2021, which brought a definitive end to the Italian Condor trial. This chapter studies the events that occurred in the court on this day as well as some of the initial reactions to the sentence. Finally, it lays out four fundamental contributions of this trial to the fight against impunity in the Southern Cone, especially in Uruguay.

This book compiles seven studies about repressive spaces in Canelones and Montevideo (Uruguay), drawn from the findings that emerged from the postgraduate course: “Materiality and memory. Knowledge and Applied Practices to the Study of the Clandestine Repressive Spaces of the Dictatorship” carried out in 2020 at the Postgraduate School of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of the Republic (UDELAR).

Carlos Marín Suárez and Mariana Risso were the editors of the publication.

This publication documents the exchanges and exhibitions that occurred during the seminar “Access to Human Rights Archives: Models and Experiences”, organised by the General Archive of the University of the Republic and the General Archive of Uruguay (6th and 7th November 2008).

Biography on Gerardo Gatti which constitutes a very important piece of research on his life and trajectory as a student leader, the founder of the Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (National Workers’ Convention), and a political leader. The first secretary general of the Partido por la Victoria del Pueblo (Party for the People’s Victory) was disappeared in Argentina in 1976, after having been captured by a joint operation between Uruguayan and Argentine repressors under the framework of Operation Condor.

This publication is the written and photographic testimony of Daniel Rey Piuma, a Uruguayan naval officer who worked in the Inteligencia de Prefectura (the intelligence agency of the Argentine Naval Prefecture), before deserting the Armed Forces to denounce the systematic practice of torture by the Uruguayan Naval Fusiliers Corps (FUSNA) before the United Nations (UN). He had joined this force in 1977 before escaping the country in 1980.

The name of the author of this book is a pseudonym. The text was based on the declarations of Hugo Walter García Rivas, an intelligence officer who requested leave and later deserted the Army’s Compañía de Contrainformación e Inteligencia (Company of Counterinformation and Intelligence). He made his first public declarations in Brazil in June 1980, providing information about the systematic and generalised use of torture, military intelligence operations, and names of repressors who were responsible for kidnapping operations.

Indictment of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Argentina led by Pablo E. Ouviña and M. Mercedes Moguilansky, in Plan Condor and Automotores Orletti II- Cases 1504, 1951, 2054 and 1976.

The last ten years has seen a substantial growth in studies on political exiles, both in terms of the subjects and problems that they choose to investigate. This book is enrooted in this process since it crystallises reflections and concerns that are confluent within the field. This work brings together innovative pieces of research that were presented at the International Colloquium of Research on the Political Exiles of the Southern Cone, celebrated on 11 October 2017 at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.

This book compiles the action taken by Amnesty International to defend human rights in Uruguay during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly linked to the national and international efforts to build support networks for victims of political persecution. It develops an in-depth account of the cases of the legislators Michelini, Gutiérrez Ruiz, and Ferreira Aldunate.

This report by the Madres y Familiares de Uruguayos Detenidos Desparecidos (Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Uruguayan Detainees) constitutes an effort to bring together the information about the disappeared detainees and the conditions of their capture that had been gathered until the report was published in 2004. It also contains information about political assassinations and the children who were appropriated and returned to their biological families.

This book explores the history of the conformation and trajectory of the fights of the Asociación Madres y Familiares de Detenidos Desparecidos de Uruguay (The Uruguayan Association for the Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Detainees) from 1976 to 2005. The different stages in the claims for the truth to be known about the whereabouts of the disappeared detainees, both on national soil and in the region, is systematised through testimonies from the protagonists and key documents that unfold the context of the political disputes of these years and its projection onto the present.

Specialists of Latin America, the United States, and Europe offer an in-depth analysis of Operation Condor, which operated in South America during the 1970s. Operation Condor was created in 1975 to widen the links between the intelligence services and repressive organisations of the Southern Cone and to facilitate coordinated action.Various aspects are analysed by specialists on Operation Condor from Latin America, the United States, and Europe.

This book tells the story of the Grupos de Acción Unificadora (Unifying Action Groups, GAU) in the organisation of student and trade unions and the unification of the left through the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) coalition. It highlights aspects of the cruel repression of militants in Uruguay and Argentina during the civil-military dictatorship and the repressive coordination of Operation Condor.