Rodolfo Walsh, who disappeared after being kidnapped 25 March 1977, was the best known of the Argentine journalists who fell victim to state terror because of their work or their political involvement.

The list also includes foreigners such as the Uruguayan politician and journalist Zelmar Michelini, who was murdered in Buenos Aires in May 1976, and the Italian-American Toni Agatina Motta, who disappeared in Buenos Aires in October 1980.

“It is with very great satisfaction that we welcome the long jail sentences that a Buenos Aires court imposed on 26 October on 16 of the former military and police officers who were tried for the worst human rights violations every committed in this part of the world,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said.

“The murderers of Rodolfo Walsh and so many others, including the former naval captains Alfredo Astiz and Jorge Acosta, who received life sentences, have finally received the punishment that an entire people and families in other countries had awaited for so long. A trial of this importance would not have been possible without a long campaign by civil society, which in return must be allowed access in the relevant countries to all the information about a period that is still very present in the minds of so many.”

This demand also concerns the US government, which began to open its archives during Bill Clinton’s presidency in June 1999.