BUENOS AIRES (AP)  A trial began on Monday for Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, a retired general, as well as for five former generals and two others who are accused of kidnappings and murders that prosecutors say took place in the Campo de Mayo military base.

General Bignone is accused of holding ultimate responsibility for myriad cases of torture, illegal break-ins and deprivations of human rights from 1976 to 1978, before he was appointed president by the military junta in the waning years of the dictatorship.

As president from 1982 to 1983, General Bignone protected the military as Argentina returned to democracy; he granted amnesty to human rights violators and ordered the destruction of documents related to torture and the disappearances of political opponents before he agreed to transfer power to a democratically elected president, Raúl Alfonsín.

Argentina’s courts and Congress later overturned the amnesty, and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has made a high priority of prosecuting leaders of the dictatorship. General Bignone was charged in 2003, but the trial was delayed until now.