The Inter-American Human Rights Court is to look into the possibility of pronouncing sentence this week against the government of Uruguay in a case related to the forced disappearance in 1976 of María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman, wife of Marcelo Ariel Gelman, an Argentine freelance journalist living in Uruguay, murdered that same year. 

The Court is planning to hold a hearing on February 23 and 24 in which it will rule on the extent, reparations and costs concerning the Gelman v. Uruguay case, filed by Juan Gelman, the dead journalist’s father. 

Mrs. Gelman was seven months pregnant when a military commando broke into her home on 1976 and took her and her husband prisoner. The journalist’s remains were discovered in 1989; they had been stuffed into a barrel, mixed with cement and sand and thrown into a river. A daughter of the couple was born in captivity and was found two decades later. Her mother’s whereabouts remain unknown. 

According to a communiqué from the Inter-American Court based in San José, Costa Rica, a study is to be made of the convictions for actions said to have been carried out by government agents within the framework of the “Operation Condor,” a coordinated operational plan carried out by the dictatorships ruling Southern Cone nations during the 1970s and 1980s.