In the 1970s political violence in Argentina resulted in thousands of deaths, prolonged arbitrary arrest, unfair trials, pervasive torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The most salient feature of repression by the military dictatorship was the practice of disappearances: At least 15,000 (and possibly up to 25,000) were abducted by security forces, their detention unacknowledged. They were sent to one of 250 secret detention centers, where they were interrogated under barbaric methods of torture. Ultimately, the vast majority of the desaparecidos were systematically, but secretly, murdered. Their bodies were disposed of in clandestine gravesites or dumped from airplanes into the ocean. More than twenty-five years later at least 12,000 victims remain unaccounted for, despite efforts by their relatives and civil society to establish their fate and the whereabouts of their remains.

The repressive campaign was...