For Italians who recall the murderous repression conducted by Latin America’s military juntas, July 9, 2021, is a date bound to remain long in their memory. It marked the conclusion of proceedings that began two decades earlier, when magistrate Giancarlo Capaldo launched investigations into the dozens of Italian citizens who were “disappeared” in the late 1970s and early 1980s in connection with the infamous Operation Condor.

It took fifteen years to conduct the preliminary work for the trial, which ultimately saw twenty-one former military men, ministers, and even statesmen in the dock. One of them resident in Italy’s southern Salerno province was Jorge Néstor Troccoli, a former officer in the Uruguayan Navy’s secret services. He had some years earlier used his Italian citizenship to flee Uruguay in order to evade prosecution in that country over the same charges.

Six years after the proceedings finally got underway in Italy, this month the trial reached its conclusion in the Cassation Court. Fourteen of the defendants, including Troccoli, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Decades since the crimes were committed, some of the twenty-one defendants died before they could be brought to justice. But in Latin America and beyond, many more such criminals remain unpunished.