A spokesman for the court said that General Videla had refused to answer the majority of questions put to him. At the hearing, the country's former leader asked the judge that he be tried in a military and not a civil court.

Protesters outside threw eggs, stones and sticks when he was later taken to a prison in the capital, Buenos Aires. General Videla was arrested earlier this week and now faces as many as a dozen charges related to the kidnapping of children.

It is alleged that he devised a plan to take babies who were born to women detained by government forces. The offences are said to have taken place during the period known in Argentina as the dirty war. It's thought that more than 10,000 people were killed during the 1970s and 1980s.

Most human rights abuses were forgiven under an amnesty law approved when the country returned to democracy, but the abduction of children was not included in that reprieve. Two months ago the Argentine parliament also voted to overturn the amnesty law.

Over the past 20 years one group representing victims' families, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, have kept up their weekly vigil for the dead in the centre of Buenos Aires.