In late 1976, María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman, a university student in her third trimester of pregnancy, was arbitrarily detained in Buenos Aires, Argentina by Uruguayan and Argentinean military commandos and then transferred to a detention center in Montevideo Uruguay, where she gave birth to her child. Ms. Gelman was forcefully disappeared and her daughter was taken from her and given to an Uruguayan family under "Operation Condor" which involved the systematic practice of arbitrary detention, torture, execution, and enforced disappearances by the Uruguayan dictatorship. In December 1986, the Uruguayan Government approved an amnesty law, which was also approved by national referendum, that eliminated the possibility that military and police officers who committed human rights violations prior to May 1985 would be investigated, tried, and sanctioned. The Court found that the State violated the American Convention on Human Rights and the American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons.
Case Summary: Gelman v. Uruguay, Case Summary