BUENOS AIRES: Two Argentine former military junta leaders convicted of overseeing the systematic kidnapping of babies should not be shown any mercy, the head of a rights group was quoted as saying Sunday.
Thursday, a judge handed down jail terms to Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone for the abductions of the children belonging to leftist activists killed during the South American state's 1976-1983 dictatorship.
The sentencing followed years of legal pushes by the rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which claims 500 children were stolen and then raised by families close to the regime as their own.
"Do not feel sorry or pity" for Videla and Bignone, Estela de Carlotto, who heads the group, was quoted as saying by the Pagina/12 newspaper Sunday.
"I said 'mission accomplished' when I heard the landmark ruling," she added.
In the 35 abductions detailed during the trial of Videla and Bignone, most of the mothers were held at ESMA -- Argentina's notorious Naval Mechanics School, a torture center located in the heart of Buenos Aires.
The maternity ward was on the second floor, where there was a hallway leading to the torture rooms that the executioners cruelly dubbed "The Avenue of Happiness."
The inmates gave birth while shackled and hooded and very few were ever allowed even to see the faces of their babies, according to survivor testimony.
In most cases, the baby was given to a soldier or the friend of a soldier, while the mother was later thrown from a military plane into the sea, naked and still alive.
Human rights advocates say some 30,000 Argentines "disappeared" during the military regime's so-called "dirty war" against leftists and leftist sympathizers.
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