Former Uruguay dictator Bordaberry dead at 83

Former Uruguayan dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry, convicted of killing political opponents during his reign, died of respiratory failure on Sunday at age 83.

Bordaberry, who was elected president in 1971 before dissolving Congress and ruling by military-backed decree, was convicted last year. He was given a 30-year term and allowed to serve his sentence at his home due to health problems.

Friends of the family and lawmakers from the center-right Colorado party, in which Bordaberry's son Pedro serves as a senator, confirmed the death.

A one-time cattle rancher, Bordaberry was president for about four years until he was replaced by the military.

Some 200 people were kidnapped and killed during Uruguay's 1973-1985 dictatorship. Many more were arrested and tortured.

"The generation that brought conflict to Uruguay is coming to an end," Luis Alberto Heber, head of the center-right National Party, told local radio. "The page is turning."

Uruguayans remain divided over how to deal with former military officers accused of human rights crimes.

The issue has become a political problem for the country's current leader, Jose Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla fighter who had been jailed during the dictatorship.

A year after democracy returned to the small nation of 3.4 million people, a law was passed to protect officers from prosecution. Uruguayans voted to maintain that law in two referendums in 1989 and 2009.

Mujica backed scrapping the amnesty as part of his campaign platform. But the result of the 2009 referendum and concerns over the potential political fallout led him to change course.

Leftist coalitions in power since 2005 have said that some cases fall outside the provisions of the amnesty law and about 20 former military personnel have been convicted.

In May Congress rejected a government-backed bill to throw out the amnesty law altogether. Mujica's approval ratings have suffered due in part to the fracas over the issue.

The government issued a decree last month giving judges the go-ahead to investigate dictatorship-era rights cases while retired military officers push for such cases to be scrapped.