Juan Maria Bordaberry, the civilian politician who ushered in Uruguay’s 1973-1985 military dictatorship, died while under house arrest, relatives said. He was 83.
Mr Bordaberry was serving a 30-year prison term on charges of subverting the country’s constitution and violating human rights, but given his advanced age and weak health was able to serve out his sentence at home.
“He has been very sick for the past two years, and was very weak for the past day,” senator Bordaberry’s spokesman José Maria Goycochea told the daily El Pais.
Deeply conservative and a devout Roman Catholic, Mr Bordaberry was born in Montevideo in 1928. He became active in politics in the 1950s, was elected senator 1963-1965, and served as agriculture minister between 1969-1971, when he ran for president.
With Cuban-inspired Tupamaro guerillas engaged in a wave of attacks and the military under orders to quash unrest, Mr Bordaberry took office in March 1972 in a highly-polarised political environment.
The following year, seeking to thwart a military uprising but lacking political support, he agreed to join the coup and close down congress. The arrangement with the military lasted until 1976, when he was replaced by another right-wing politician.
Democracy was restored in Uruguay in 1985.
Mr Bordaberry lived quietly in his cattle ranch until 2006, when he was arrested in a case involving four murders, including the 1976 deaths two Uruguayan legislators in neigh-bouring Argentina.
In March 2010 Mr Bordaberry was rolled into a court house hooked up to an oxygen tank to hear a judge sentence him to 30 years in prison.
A presidential peace commission established in 2000 found that 38 people were abducted, and either were executed or died as a result of torture during the military dictatorship.
Many Uruguayan citizens, however, were detained and executed in Argentina, and others were detained in Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia during that period, the commission found.
Mr Bordaberry was married to Josefina Herran, and the couple had nine children.