Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, former military leaders of Argentina, are being accused of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners. Their trial has opened, the BBC reports:

More than 100 children are known to have been given for adoption to military or police couples. The long-awaited trial,...
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AFP reports:

Spain's attorney general's office on Tuesday rejected a demand that it open a national probe into allegations that newborn babies were stolen from their mothers and sold to other families for decades under a policy approved by Franco's dictatorship.  ... "The attorney general's office refused to open an inquiry at...
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The autonous government of Madrid has initiated an investigation of the theft of newborn babies who were then given up for adoption, a practice reported to have occurred in the Franco years, El País reports. The parents were told their child had died. The preliminary investigation, which focuses on the 1960s, is meant...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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In September, the cabinet of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister, approved the draft for a new Law of Democratic Memory that seeks to go farther than existing legislation, which dates from 2007, in settling the unfinished business of the transition to democracy. The new law would provide material and symbolic reparations for victims...
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What will Governor Dalrymple sacrifice for the Dakota Access Pipeline? Activist and former Green Party candidate Winona LaDuke reminds us that Standing Rock is only the most recent chapter in a long history of dispossession. “The Lakota people have survived many invasions.”
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ALBA’s fifth annual Human Rights Film Festival featured 21 documentary films from 12 countries (four world premieres, 12 New York premieres). The Randall Award went to Among the Believers, about radical Islam and a charismatic cleric in Pakistan.
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This past Tuesday, Jorge Rafael Videla, the ex Argentine dictator who ruled from 1976 to 1983, gave his final words in his court case regarding the theft of babies from pregnant women during the country's Dirty War. According to elpais.com, the 86 year-old Videla used this platform as a means for insulting the...
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Investigations continue into the scandal of thousands of stolen and illegally adopted Spanish newborns, a practice that begun during the Franco years but continued well into the democratic period. See last week's CBS item here; previous Volunteer coverage here.
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The AP reports:

Spanish prosecutors are investigating 849 cases of newborn children stolen from their mothers and sold to other families for profit, the country's attorney general said Friday. Candido Conde-Pumpido said 162 cases had already been referred for trial and only 38 have been dropped for a lack of evidence. It is well...
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