BUENOS AIRES — A court in Argentina on Tuesday convicted two former Ford Motor executives and sentenced them to prison for helping the country’s military dictators kidnap and torture 24 workers during the 1970s.

The convictions were the first in which representatives of a multinational firm were found culpable in a human rights trial in Argentina.

Activists hailed the sentences as a major step toward making amends for the cooperation that several businesses provided to the brutal junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Union leaders were among the tens of thousands of people sent to clandestine detention centers where suspected dissidents were arbitrarily detained, tortured and often killed.

Relatives of the 24 victims in the Ford case burst into applause in the courtroom as a judge read the verdicts.