Former Urugayan dictator faces trial

Following one of 2006's hottest trends for former dictators, the former military strongman of Uruguay, 78 year old Juan Maria Bordaberry will be tried on charges relating to the deaths of 10 political dissidents during his rule. Ousted in a coup d'etat by coup d'etat by other members of his military government, Bordaberry found himself a target of the government of Uruguay's newly elected left wing populist president, Tabare Vasquez.

Bordaberry, who is already in jail pending trial for his role in political killings and "disappearances" in neighboring Argentina, joins a list of former dictators who have found that the amnesty laws they wrote to absolve themselves for their own crimes may not, in fact, protect them into perpetuity.

Other dictators of note who have found themselves facing justice for their crimes this year, either in person or in absentia, are Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, Bangladesh's Hossein Mohammed Ershad, and Serbia's Slobodan Milošević, who rather unsportingly died during his interminable war crimes trial in The Hague.