Buenos Aires - Jacobo Timmerman, Argentina's most prominent newspaper editor, died yesterday of a heart attack at his home in Buenos Aires, aged 76, Michael McCaughan writes.
The 1970s military regime tortured him over several months, with police chief Gen Ramon Camps, a declared Nazi, taking particular pleasure in tormenting his Jewish victim. General Camps was indicted by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon last week on genocide charges. Timmerman vividly described his experience in his best-selling book Prisoner without a name, Cell without a Number, which was published in full by the New Yorker magazine.
Timmerman worked on several important papers in the 1950s before launching Primera Plana magazine in 1962, similar in format to Newsweek, quickly establishing itself as the country's most influential political weekly. In 1971 he launched his most ambitious project, the daily La Opinion, described as "left in culture, centre in politics and right-wing in economics".