Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato died in 99 (AP)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - writer Ernesto Sabato, who led the probe of the Government of crimes committed by the dictatorship of the Argentina, died at 99.

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

Sabato was a widely admired age 73 intellectual, author of works such as "The heroes and tombs", when the President Raul Alfonsin was asked to conduct an investigation into the crimes committed by the soldiers who led the Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

He called his work to help document the killings, torture and illegal arrests committed by a regime, it had originally submitted a "descent into the underworld." Report of the commission, "never Again", served base further key figures in the dictatorship after the return to the civil power.

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, at the outset, congratulate the coup that overthrew President Isabel Peron due to economic problems, social disruption, and clashes with the leftist guerrillas who have carried out kidnappings and assassinations.

He was joined by other writers in a meeting with the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla shortly after the resumption and described him as "a man grown, modest and intelligent."

While the Government's crackdown has peaked in 1978, Sabato said in an interview that "" much is improved: armed terrorist bands have been largely under control. "" He grew up criticism in 1979, denouncing censorship.

Sabato was born on June 24, 1911, the town of Rojas, near the capital of the Buenos Aires Argentina.

During his studies of physics, he joined the Communist Party youth wing and rose to become its Secretary in the 1930s, but broke with the party purges by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1934. It was the first of the "three fundamental crises in my life."

Returning to his studies, he obtained a PhD in physics and went to Paris to work on ionizing radiation in the laboratories of Joliot-Curie, where he said, that he suffered a second personal crisis.

"In Paris, I helped break the atom of uranium, which was contested by three laboratories: the"race"was won by a German." He believed at the beginning of the apocalypse. ?

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

Sabato published his first book, "One and the Universe" in 1945 and his novel first, brief, "The Tunnel", which was welcomed by Thomas Mann and Albert Camus, also who had translated it in French.

"The Angel of darkness" - "abaddon el exterminador" in the original Spanish - was honoured as the best book of the year foreign by the industry of the French book in 1976.

He received the Legion of honour, the prix Médicis for the Italy and Spain the Cervantes Prize, the most respected award in Spanish letters.

He was also a painter, and his works were exposed at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

He was married to Matilde Kuminsky-Richter, who died in 1998, more than 60 years and they had two sons: politician Jorge Federico, who died in 1995, and Mario, a documentary film director.