Jorge Isaac Anaya, 81, a former Argentine navy chief who was the leading proponent of the past dictatorship’s ill-fated 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands died Wednesday, his family said.
Anaya was the chief proponent of the failed military campaign to take the remote British-held South Atlantic archipelago, called Las Malvinas by Argentina.
The invasion triggered a 10-week war that claimed hundreds of lives and hastened the end of Argentina’s last dictatorship.
Anaya, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and other top officers were prosecuted after the end of the 1976-83 dictatorship for negligence in leading the war.
In 1986, a military tribunal ordered Anaya to serve 14 years in prison and be stripped of rank. He was pardoned in 1990 along with other top former officers by then-President Carlos Menem.
In November 2006, Anaya was summoned back to court to testify before a federal judge probing hundreds of cases of illegal kidnapping and torture at the former Navy Mechanics’ School — the chief clandestine torture center of the former dictatorship.
Authorities said Anaya suffered a heart attack before he was to testify and was rushed to a naval hospital and had remained in declining health since.
Argentina’s Supreme Court in 2005 annulled 1980s amnesty laws, freeing investigators to reopen dozens cases of suspected human-rights abuses dating to military rule. Nearly 13,000 people are reported dead or missing from a seven-year crackdown on dissent known as the Dirty War, while human-rights activists put the toll closer to 30,000.
Sara Misquez, 62, a former president of the Mescalero Apache Tribe in southern New Mexico, died Wednesday in a one-car rollover.
Misquez was alone when her sport utility vehicle veered into the median of U.S. 70, returned to the roadway and rolled east of Tularosa, New Mexico State Police said.
Misquez was wearing a seat belt, and no liquor was involved in the crash, police said.
Misquez was appointed president of the tribe following the Tribal Council’s May 1999 ouster of Paul Ortega after he served six months as president. She won the presidency in an August 1999 special election.
She was a graduate of Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kan., with a degree in business. She had served as the tribe’s administrator, as a council member and as tribal secretary.
