Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato dies at 99

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Writer Ernesto Sabato, who led the government's probe of crimes committed by Argentina's dictatorship, has died at 99.

The writer died of complications of bronchitis, his friend and collaborator Elvira Gonzalez Fraga told Radio Mitre.

Sabato was a widely admired intellectual, author of works such as "On Heroes and Tombs," when President Raul Alfonsin asked him to lead an investigation into crimes committed under the soldiers who led Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

He called his work of helping to document the murders, tortures and illegal arrests committed by a regime he had initially supported a "descent into hell." The commission's report, "Never Again," served as the basis for prosecuting key figures in the dictatorship after the return to civilian rule.

Official and independent agencies estimate that 12,000 to 30,000 were killed by government forces seeking to wipe out leftists.

Like many Argentines, Sabato initially welcomed the coup that overthrew President Isabel Peron following mounting economic problems, social turmoil and clashes with leftist guerrillas who carried out kidnappings and killings.

He joined other writers in a meeting with dictator Jorge Rafael Videla shortly after the takeover and described him as "a cultured man, modest and intelligent." Even as government repression reached its height in 1978, Sabato said in an interview that "many things have improved: the armed terrorist bands have been put, in large part, under control." He grew critical by 1979, denouncing censorship.

Sabato was born June 24, 1911, in the city of Rojas near Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires.

While studying physics, he joined the Communist Party's youth wing and rose to become its secretary in the early 1930s, but broke with the party in 1934 over purges by Soviet leader Josef Stalin. It was the first of "the three fundamental crises of my life." Returning to his studies, he earned a doctorate in physics and went to Paris to work on atomic radiation at the Joliot-Curie laboratories, where he said he suffered a second personal crisis.

"In Paris, I assisted in breaking the uranium atom, which was being disputed by three laboratories: the 'race' was won by a German. It thought it was the beginning of the apocalypse."

The third crisis emerged from his friendship with surrealist artists such as Roberto Matta, Wilfredo Lam and Andre Breton, and his growing disenchantment with what he saw as the misuse of science. He turned instead to writing.