In Italy, 24 people were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in Operation Condor, in which six South American countries conspired to kill tens of thousands of political opponents in the 1970s and ’80s. Twenty-three Italians were among those killed as part of the campaign of coordinated terror and assassinations carried out by the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Operation Condor was coordinated out of Chile, then under dictator Augusto Pinochet, and with the knowledge of the U.S. government, in particular then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Among those sentenced were former Peruvian President Francisco Morales Bermúdez, the former Bolivian interior minister, the former Uruguayan foreign minister and a former top Chilean intelligence chief. All but one of the 24 were sentenced in absentia.