The period became known as the Dirty War, and the government was later held responsible for tens of thousands of forced disappearances, kidnappings, torture, and deaths of political prisoners, in addition to widespread attacks of rural insurgents, which was later assessed as genocide.
[2] Action against those involved in the military dictatorship was discontinued after Congress passed the 1986 Ley de Punto Final, intended to "draw a line" under all that had happened until then.
In 1991, President Carlos Saúl Menem pardoned Ramón Camps and other high-ranking leaders who had been convicted in the 1985 trial, setting off waves of protest.
La Plata Federal Judge Arnaldo Corazza gathered testimony from witnesses who placed von Wernich at three illegal detention centers (Puesto Vasco, Coti Martínez and Pozo de Quilmes).
He ordered the priest's arrest on 25 September 2003, after Wernich was discovered hiding in the Chilean seaside town of El Quisco under the assumed name of "Christian González".
The tribunal was composed of judges Carlos Rozanski, Norberto Lorenzo and Horacio Insaurralde, the same panel which had convicted and sentenced Miguel Etchecolatz in 2006.
[3][8][9] Wernich's trial was thought to have revealed "the church's dark past during the dirty war, when it sometimes gave its support to the military's persecution of leftist opponents.
That past stands in stark contrast to the role the church played during the dictatorships in Chile and Brazil, where priests and bishops publicly condemned the governments and worked to save those being persecuted from torture and death.