The former Argentine dictator, Gen Jorge Videla, has been arrested in Buenos Aires and charged with crimes against humanity committed under military rule between 1976 and 1983.
The charges arise from allegations that five children born to political prisoners during the dictatorship were kidnapped.
Two of the abducted infants were illegally registered as children of a former army physician, Dr Norberto Bianco, and his wife. The Bianco couple were extradited from Paraguay last year and are awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the kidnapping.
The newborn children were taken from political prisoners in 1976-77, when Gen Videla was army chief and president.
Dr Bianco, an army major at the time, was in charge of pregnant detainees at the Campo de Mayo military hospital, where an estimated 259 newborn babies and infants were taken from their jailed mothers and given to friends of the army.
The army called it the "National Reorganisation process", sweeping away all opposition, promising economic prosperity and the defence of "western, Christian values".
"To achieve peace all the necessary people will die," Gen Videla said at the time.
By the time the junta handed back power to civilian rule, 30,000 people had been killed, the external debt had increased fivefold and millions of dollars stolen from torture victims had been deposited in European banks. Crimes committed by military leaders were pardoned under the terms of an amnesty law passed in 1989, but child theft and illegal adoptions were not included.
"We are happy that he is behind bars," said Ms Hebe de Bonafini, a spokeswoman for the Mothers of the Disappeared organisation. "We are suspicious of this move however as the judges have always been servants of the dictatorship. They [the army] are all killers and they all bear responsibility."
The army chief, Gen Martin Balza, distanced himself from Gen Videla, who was stripped of his rank after army rule ended in 1983. "It's utterly unforgivable," Gen Balza said of the child abduction cases.
Besides the kidnapping charges, Gen Videla has also been subpoenaed to appear before another judge next week to testify in an inquiry about two murdered guerrilla leaders, whose remains were dug up during military rule and have since disappeared.
Gen Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985 for 66 cases of murder, 306 abductions, 97 cases of torture and 26 robberies. But he was pardoned by President Carlos Menem after serving five years in prison.
Gen Videla has lived quietly for several years in a Buenos Aires suburb. The Children of the Disappeared group has organised vigils close to his home, beating drums and painting graffiti. "We can't put him behind bars," one activist told me, "but we can turn his home into a prison."
Gen Videla now faces three to 25 years in prison for the illegal adoption of the five children.