The Trial of the Juntas began on 22 April 1985, during the presidential administration of Raúl Alfonsín, the first elected government after the restoration of democracy in 1983.
The fourth junta, before calling for elections and relinquishing power to the democratic authorities, enacted a Self-Amnesty Law on April 18, 1983, as well as a secret decree that ordered the destruction of records and other evidence of their past crimes.
158, which mandated the initiation of legal proceedings against the nine military officers of the first three juntas, but not the fourth (ruled by General Reynaldo Bignone).
It succeeded in prosecuting the crimes of the juntas, which included kidnapping, torture, forced disappearance, and murder of an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 people during what was called the Dirty War against political dissidents.
Witnesses included former President Alejandro Lanusse, writer Jorge Luis Borges, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, President of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo; "Night of the Pencils" survivor Pablo Díaz; Patricia M. Derian, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the Carter Administration; Dutch jurist Theo van Boven, and renowned forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow.
Omar Graffigna, Leopoldo Galtieri, Jorge Anaya, and Basilio Lami Dozo were acquitted, though the latter three were concomitantly court martialed for malfeasance in waging the Falklands War of 1982.
President Néstor Kirchner obtained an Argentine Supreme Court ruling permitting extraditions in cases of crimes against humanity in 2003, and that same year the Congress repealed the Full Stop Law.
All of the Trial's judges traveled to Oslo on April 25 of that year with 147 VHS tapes which were given to the Norwegian Parliament in order to keep them safe and avoid any commercial use.