| Date | April 22 – December 9, 1985 |
| Location | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Caused by | Systematic human rights abuses committed by the Argentine Military Juntas during the Dirty War (1976–1983) |
| Resulted in | Life sentences for Videla and Massera; custodial sentences for Viola, Lambruschini, and Agosti; acquittals for four defendants; establishment of transitional justice precedent in Latin America |
| Parties | Federal Court of Criminal and Correctional Appeals of Buenos Aires · Argentine Military Juntas 1976–1983 · CONADEP · Alfonsín Administration |
| Lead figures | Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera, Raúl Alfonsín, Julio César Strassera, Luis Moreno Ocampo, León Arslanian |
The Trial of the Juntas was a landmark criminal proceeding conducted from April 22 to December 9, 1985, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in which nine former members of the Argentine Military Juntas that governed the country between 1976 and 1983 were prosecuted for crimes against humanity, including unlawful detention, torture, and murder carried out during the [Dirty War](/wiki/dirty-war-argentina). The trial was the first instance in Latin American history in which a democratically elected civilian court successfully convicted sitting former heads of state for systematic human rights abuses committed under their own command.
In March 1976, a military coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla deposed the elected government of Isabel Perón, installing the first of three successive juntas that would rule Argentina for seven years. During the period that followed, designated state security forces operated a network of clandestine detention centres — estimated by investigators at more than 340 sites nationwide — in which political dissidents, trade unionists, journalists, and civilians were detained without charge, subjected to systematic torture, and in the majority of cases killed. The scale and organisation of these operations were documented extensively in the [Nunca Más Report](/wiki/nunca-mas-report), compiled by the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP) and published in September 1984 under the administration of President Raúl Alfonsín.
The [Argentine Military Junta 1976–1983](/wiki/argentine-military-junta-1976-1983) had initially passed a self-amnesty law in September 1983 — the Ley de Pacificación Nacional — designed to shield its members from future prosecution. Following the restoration of civilian government in December 1983, Alfonsín's administration annulled the self-amnesty decree by executive order in January 1984, opening a legal pathway to prosecution. Decree 158/83, signed on the day of Alfonsín's inauguration, ordered the prosecution of the nine most senior Junta commanders, bypassing the military justice system in favour of the Federal Court of Criminal and Correctional Appeals of Buenos Aires.
### April–May 1985
Proceedings opened on April 22, 1985, before a six-judge panel of the Federal Court of Criminal and Correctional Appeals, presided over by Chief Judge León Arslanian. Prosecutor Julio César Strassera led the government's case alongside deputy prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who would later serve as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The nine defendants — representing the three successive juntas — were Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera, Orlando Ramón Agosti, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Armando Lambruschini, Omar Domingo Rubens Graffigna, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, Jorge Isaac Anaya, and Basilio Lami Dozo.
### June–November 1985
The prosecution presented testimony from 833 witnesses over the course of the evidentiary phase, which ran from June through late October. Testimony described in systematic detail the operations of clandestine detention centres including the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), which served as a principal navy detention site under Massera's command, and Campo de Mayo, the army's primary detention facility north of Buenos Aires. Forensic evidence, survivor testimony, and documentary records drawn from the CONADEP archive — comprising approximately 8,960 documented cases of enforced disappearance — formed the evidentiary core of the prosecution's case. The defence teams argued throughout that orders had been lawfully issued under the doctrine of obediencia debida (due obedience) and that the military had acted within the scope of a legitimate counter-insurgency operation.
### December 1985
On December 9, 1985, the Federal Court delivered its verdicts. Videla and Massera received life sentences. Viola was sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment. Lambruschini received 8 years, and Agosti 4 years and 6 months. Graffigna, Galtieri, Anaya, and Lami Dozo were acquitted on the primary charges but remained subject to separate military tribunal proceedings relating to the conduct of the [Falklands Conflict](/wiki/falklands-conflict). The court's written judgment, running to more than 2,000 pages, established as settled legal fact that the crimes had been carried out as part of a systematic, centrally commanded plan — a finding that directly contradicted the defendants' obediencia debida argument.
The verdict was received in the Plaza de Mayo by an estimated crowd of 100,000 people. International human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued statements characterising the proceedings as a model for accountability under transitional justice frameworks. Within Argentina, reactions were divided along political and generational lines: survivors' organisations and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo generally welcomed the convictions while noting the acquittals of four defendants as an incomplete reckoning. Elements of the armed forces expressed dissatisfaction with the proceedings, a tension that would contribute to the carapintada military uprisings of 1987 and 1988.
The Alfonsín government subsequently came under pressure from military factions to limit further prosecutions of lower-ranking officers. This resulted in the passage of the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) in December 1986, which imposed a 60-day statute of limitations on new human rights prosecutions, and the Ley de Obediencia Debida (Due Obedience Law) in June 1987, which exempted officers below the rank of colonel from prosecution on the grounds that they had acted under orders. Both laws were annulled by the Argentine Congress in August 2003 and declared unconstitutional by the Argentine Supreme Court in June 2005.
The Trial of the Juntas is regarded as a foundational moment in the development of international transitional justice law. The proceedings were studied extensively by the legal teams that designed the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1993), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998). Luis Moreno Ocampo's participation as deputy prosecutor was cited in his nomination file to the International Criminal Court in 2003 as direct experiential qualification for the role.
Videla and Massera were released from house arrest in 1990 following presidential pardons issued by Carlos Menem. Both were subsequently re-arrested following the annulment of the amnesty and impunity laws: Videla died in prison in May 2013 while serving a second life sentence for crimes related to the systematic theft of children born to detained mothers, and Massera died under house arrest in November 2010 while facing additional charges. The Nunca Más Report, which provided the evidentiary and moral foundation for the prosecution, has remained continuously in print since 1984 and has been translated into eleven languages.
The proceedings were dramatised in the 1985 Argentine film *La Historia Oficial* (The Official Story), directed by Luis Puenzo, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1986 — the first Argentine film to receive the honour. The film depicts the trial obliquely through the story of a middle-class couple who gradually discover their adopted daughter may have been born to a disappeared mother. Strassera's closing address to the court — concluding with the phrase *Nunca Más* ("Never Again") drawn directly from the CONADEP report title — has been reproduced in full in the curricula of law faculties at the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Chile, and Yale Law School. A full transcript of the proceedings was deposited with the [London Metropolitan Archives](/wiki/london-metropolitan-archives) in 1987 as part of an international human rights documentation initiative coordinated by Amnesty International's International Secretariat.