General Leopoldo Galtieri wrote his name into British and Argentine history in 1982 when he and the other members of Argentina’s military junta ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands, a British outpost in the South Atlantic. When he lost the war he inevitably lost the presidency, and in 1986 he was convicted of military negligence and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was released after a special pardon in 1989, but more recently he was indicted for his part in much more systematic crimes, the prolonged brutality against its own people of the junta that ruled Argentina under four dictators from 1976 to 1983.

The so-called “dirty war” against all opposition in Argentina during those years involved abduction, torture and murder of huge numbers estimated at between 9,000 and 30,000 people. In a parallel to the cases of “the disappeared” in Chile, large numbers of intellectuals and left-wing activists disappeared, with some 200 babies being snatched for adoption by military families. In 1999 Galtieri was summoned to appear in a court case involving such an abduction. The following year he and 47 other high-ranking members of the junta were accused of crimes against humanity, and warrants were issued through Interpol for their arrest. This action was taken by Baltazar Garzón, the Spanish judge who had earlier sought the extradition of General Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. Galtieri was arrested last July, and the case against him was continuing at the time of his death.

In this light, the Falklands invasion can be seen for what it was, essentially a desperate distraction. In the weeks following the invasion, while the British steamed south, Galtieri tried to ride a wave of domestic popular support, encouraged by the belief of most people in the country that the Malvinas — as the Falkland Islands are known in Spanish — rightly belonged to them. He appeared, for instance, at a mass rally in the Plaza de Mayo, where President Perón used to speak. But even then some of his remarks were hissed and booed, and he appeared to be losing control of events. Before long his 188-day presidency had produced one of the great military disasters of Argentine history.

In the international community, the largely barren islands were thought hardly worth a fight, and the United States President, Ronald Reagan, dispatched Alexander Haig on a round of shuttle diplomacy between London, Washington and Buenos Aires. But to the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the invasion was an affront to British sovereignty and repulsing it was a matter of principle and international law. To considerable astonishment she ordered a naval task force led by the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible to set sail for the South Atlantic, 8,000 miles away, where the winter cold was beginning to grip.

The island of South Georgia, where the Argentinians also landed, was recaptured on April 25, and the first British attacks on the Falklands began on May 1. Argentina suffered a major blow the following day when the General Belgrano was sunk. The 11-week war caused the deaths of 652 Argentinians and 255 British troops.

Eventually the ill-matched Argentinian forces, under the command of General Menéndez, surrendered to Major-General Jeremy Moore on June 14. Ironically, the conflict that was designed to secure Galtieri in power despite his unpopularity achieved just that for his enemy, Margaret Thatcher. Her own drastic domestic policies had caused her poll ratings to plummet, but she was now able to see her measures through until the economy recovered, and won elections with large majorities in 1983 and 1987.

Three days after the surrender, Galtieri was removed from office by his fellow officers, and replaced by General Bignone, just as he had ousted his predecessor, General Viola. The following year, after giving an interview in which he criticised other military men for their attitudes during the Falklands conflict, he was sentenced to a period of military detention.

To the end of his life, however, he claimed to be unrepentant about the Falklands invasion, repeatedly saying that he would do the same thing again if given a chance. “It was done and done well,” he told an appeal court in 1988, claiming that Argentina had lost the conflict “by a narrow margin”. He added: “I am at peace with my conscience, and proud of having been able to defend my fatherland.”

Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri was born in 1926 in the lower-middle-class Buenos Aires suburb of Caseros, the son of Italian immigrants. He entered the National Military College in 1943 and graduated two years later, not into the aristocratic, polo-playing cavalry, but into the more technocratic engineering corps. By 1972 he was a general, and in 1976, after the military coup which had deposed President María Estela Perón, he became head of the 2nd Army Corps, based in Rosario, where he cultivated numerous businessmen and civilian politicians.

In January 1979, Galtieri was given one of the top military posts, command of 1st Army Corps; and at the end of that year he was selected by Viola to be the next commander-in-chief of the army. At the time Viola himself was commander-in-chief, and due to succeed General Videla as President in April 1981.

Viola eventually became President as planned, but by then the Argentine economy had been plunged into crisis, with raging inflation and an unprecedented wave of bankruptcies. During the deliberations in the junta before Viola’s formal appointment it became clear that Galtieri wanted the presidency himself.

Viola soon found himself overshadowed by Galtieri and given very little scope for manoeuvre by other members of the junta, on which Galtieri was now the army representative. Viola was both physically and politically ill by November 1981, and after a further power struggle he was replaced by Galtieri, who not only became President but remained commander-in-chief of the army.

On the face of it, Galtieri appeared to have more power than Viola had had during his brief presidency. But this proved not to be the case. In matters of consequence, as the negotiations of April and May 1982 showed, Galtieri had to consult not only his colleagues in the junta, Admiral Anaya and Air Force Brigadier Lami Dozo, but also senior generals in the army.