Argentina's infamous "Blonde Angel of Death" Alfredo Astiz has been jailed for life in one of the country's biggest human rights cases.
Astiz, 59, stood trial with other former officials accused of horrific crimes at the ESMA Naval Mechanics School, where about 5,000 dissidents were held and tortured during the 1976-1983 "Dirty War" dictatorship.
Marking the end of a 22-month trial in which 79 survivors gave evidence, 12 defendants were sentenced to life while four others were punished with between 18 and 25 years in jail.
Hundreds of people gathered on the street outside the packed courtroom, some holding up photographs of the victims of the men inside. They applauded at the reading out of each sentence.
"We can finally be at peace, knowing that justice has been done," a woman in the crowd told local television.
Former navy captain Astiz boasted of his dictatorship-era crimes in a magazine interview in 1998, saying he was "the best-trained man in Argentina to kill journalists and politicians".
"I'm not sorry for anything," he said in the interview.
He infiltrated human rights groups whose members were later kidnapped and was convicted in absentia in Europe of killing two French nuns held at the ESMA.
Other defendants included Jorge Acosta, known as "The Tiger," who said during the two-year trial that "human rights violations are unavoidable during a war".
He was one of the 12 sentenced to life in prison.
Only about 200 people are known to have survived from the estimated 5,000 prisoners held in the ESMA.
Many of the rest were drugged and dumped out of airplanes into the nearby River Plate in a gruesome weekly ritual.
Human rights groups say Argentina's military government killed up to 30,000 people during the six-year dictatorship. Most of them disappeared and their bodies were never found.
