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.