Ex-Argentine Prelate Antonio Plaza
Former Archbishop Antonio Plaza, a controversial leader of Argentina’s conservative Catholic church accused of watching the torture of opponents of the former military government, is dead at the age of 77.
Plaza slipped into a coma after being hospitalized for lung and heart complications and died late Tuesday in La Plata, a provincial capital 30 miles south of Buenos Aires.
Plaza was a police chaplain when a military regime ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Human rights organizations accused him of involvement in some of the period’s “dirty war” atrocities.
He was accused of visiting clandestine detention centers during that period as a spiritual adviser to the military.
According to a government panel, at least 9,000 people vanished during the “dirty war,” more than half of them in the Buenos Aires-La Plata area.
Plaza, who retired in 1985, criticized newly elected President Raul Alfonsin for bringing charges against members of the former junta.
Five of those junta members, including two ex-presidents, were convicted in 1985 of human rights abuses.
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