These trials, primarily oral and public in format, focused on the members of the Armed Forces and the police force. The first trials held in 1985 involved the highest-ranking officials within those structures. Nearly two decades have passed between the enactment of the Clean Slate and Due Obedience Acts in 1986 and 1987 and their annulment. During that period, the prosecution process only addressed child misappropriation and property theft crimes. By 2005, when the barriers that used to hinder criminal investigation and prosecution were eliminated, accountability within the repressive structure at all levels could finally be investigated and prosecuted. Trials were held in 22 out of the 24 jurisdictions that make up the country. They included both the repression carried out by the state forces during the dictatorship and all the previous events that had occurred during the preceding years that finally led to the military coup.
The prosecution also includes civilians who committed crimes within the framework of the systematic plan of repression. Members of the Judiciary, men and women who misappropriated the children of abducted people, as well as the personnel of the intelligence agency, members of the Catholic Church, and physicians, were judged and convicted as well. The judicial proceedings against business executives who had participated in the repression and benefited from it were challenging. The first conviction against a company owner for his involvement in the kidnapping of a worker took place in 2016 and became final in 2023.
The process of justice was entrusted to the federal courts – i.e., the lower civil court of justice. These courts relied on the criminal crime classifications in place at the time the crimes were committed, namely: kidnapping, torture, murder, misappropriation of minors, rape, false imprisonment, and theft. From the Trial of the Juntas and onwards, the Judiciary found that this set of crimes was part of a systematic plan. Due to the significant role that the forced disappearance of people played in the repressive strategy across the country, Argentine human rights organizations, along with other regional organizations, advocated for its international recognition as a crime.
From 1985 until the present day, more than 1200 people have been sentenced for crimes against humanity, and among them, 200 civilians (source). Most of the sentences were and are served in prison centers in different places scattered across the country, except for a group of detainees who are serving their sentence in the military unit of Campo de Mayo. The advanced age of many of these convicted and prosecuted individuals gives them nowadays the chance to serve their sentence or wait for trial under home arrest (source).
In the case of Argentina, the search, identification, and restitution of disappeared people have been the responsibility of the federal court system, both concerning the investigation conducted by the National Court of Appeals on Criminal and Correctional Matters of the Federal Capital City since 1985 and within the framework of the investigations conducted in each province. As to the search for the kidnapped children, specific institutions such as the National Commission for the Right to Identity (Comisión Nacional por el Derecho a la Identidad, CoNaDi) and the National Genetic Data Bank (Banco Nacional de Datos Genéticos) were created. Organizations from the civil society are actively involved in the search for disappeared detainees and misappropriated children.