Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla admitted for the first time to ordering the killing and disappearing of thousands of government opponents during the country’s Dirty War, according to local press reports.
“Let’s say there were about 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die in order to win the war against subversion,” Videla said during a series of interviews with journalist Ceferino Reato. “We couldn’t execute them, but we also couldn’t take them to the courts.”