MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Sentenced to 640 years in prison.

A former Argentine navy officer who admitted to participating in “death flights,” in which naked detainees were thrown from planes during the country's military dictatorship, was convicted yesterday by a Spanish court of committing crimes against humanity.

A three-judge panel said Adolfo Scilingo, 58, took an active part in the "dirty war" drive to crush leftist dissent during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. His trial was Spain's first under a law which says crimes against humanity can be tried in this country ? even if they are alleged to have been committed elsewhere.

Relatives and friends of victims of Argentina's Junta era hugged each other in the courtroom and outside the court upon hearing the verdict. Some wore stickers with pictures of missing or murdered loved ones.

Scilingo, an impassive look on his face, wrote notes as the sentence was read. His lawyer said he would appeal to the Spanish Supreme Court. Scilingo had come to Spain voluntarily in 1997 to testify before a judge probing atrocities allegedly committed by military regimes in Argentina and Chile. He admitted to participating in two "death flights" in which a total of 30 people were thrown to their deaths into the Atlantic. He said he also knew of other atrocities when he was based at the Buenos Aires Navy Mechanics School, or ESMA, one of the most notorious torture centres.

Spanish National Court Judge Baltasar Garzón, who was investigating the alleged crimes, subsequently jailed and indicted him.

During the trial, Scilingo insisted he fabricated the taped testimony to trigger an investigation into Argentina's "dirty war." But yesterday, the National Court convicted him of crimes against humanity, and sentenced him to 21 years in prison for each of the 30 people thrown from planes. He was also given five years for torture and five years for illegal detention.

Under Spanish law, the maximum a person can serve in prison is 30 years for most crimes, or 40 years for terrorism. The country has no death penalty or life imprisonment. Sentences of hundreds or even thousands of years are common in Spain, especially for Basque separatists.

Scilingo had been accused of genocide, torture and terrorism. But the verdict said his offences were better described as "crimes against humanity." It said he had in fact taken part in two "death flights, participated actively" in the Argentine military regime's campaign to snuff out dissent and had an important role helping a covert unit at the navy school to interrogate and torture people. Prosecutors had sought a jail term of 9,138 years.

Nine Argentine junta leaders were tried in their country in 1985 on charges of abduction, torture and execution. They were imprisoned but pardoned in 1990 by then president Carlos Menem.

Trials on other lower-ranking officers were frozen by two amnesty laws passed by Congress in 1986-87. The Full Stop and Due Obedience laws were quashed by Congress in 2003 but the Supreme Court still has to decide whether the move was constitutional. In the meantime, some cases in human rights violations have been re-opened.

Some 13,000 people were listed officially as dead or missing in the wake of the military Junta years, many of them reported to have been kidnapped off the streets or detained in torture centres before being executed. Human right groups put the total number as high as 30,000.