Posted by svolk on November 12th, 2009
“The second I saw Martín, I knew he was my brother,” recalls Mauricio Amarilla-Molfino. “I didn’t need to see the DNA results. Just like me and my brothers, he has the same ears!”
Smiles broke out amidst the emotionally charged atmosphere in the offices of the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) in Buenos Aires last week.
The three Amarilla-Molfino brothers did not know their mother had given birth to a fourth son. The three older brothers had grieved the “disappearance” of their parents, Guillermo and Marcela, by the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from1976 to 1983. Yet evidence that came to light just three months ago revealed that Marcela had given birth to a fourth son – Martín – in 1979, while she was held prisoner at the clandestine detention center, Campo de Mayo.
Twenty-nine years later, Martín Amarilla-Molfino was united with his three elder brothers, along with aunts and uncles, and saw a photo of his parents for the very first time.
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Posted by svolk on November 9th, 2009
AP, Nov. 5, 2009
SAN SALVADOR — El Salvador’s president says the country will award its highest honor to six Jesuit priests murdered by the army in 1989.
President Mauricio Funes says the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado awards are a “public act of atonement” for mistakes by past governments.
They will be presented on Nov. 16 to mark the date 20 years ago when soldiers killed Spanish-born university rector Ignacio Ellacuria, five other Jesuits, a housekeeper and her daughter.
The killings sparked international outrage and tarnished the image of U.S. anti-communism efforts after it was found that some of the soldiers involved received training at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Funes made the announcement on Tuesday.
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Posted by svolk on November 1st, 2009
In Chile, “moment has come” for ex-soldiers to reveal secrets of Pinochet dictatorship
SANTIAGO, Chile
Hundreds of former military draftees rallying outside Chile’s presidential palace were asked Sunday to come forward and reveal crimes they committed and witnessed during Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
The draftees have long feared that if they name names and reveal where bodies are buried, they will face prosecution by the courts or retaliation by those who ordered them to torture and kill.
But now the information they once promised to carry to their graves has become both a heavy psychological burden and a bargaining chip. By offering confessions, some of these now-aging men believe they can improve their chances of getting government pensions and mental health care.
“Perhaps today is the day when the moment has come, for us to describe what we saw and what we suffered inside the military bases, the things that we witnessed and that we did,” said Fernando Mellado, who leads the Santiago chapter of the Former Soldiers of 1973.
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Posted by svolk on October 28th, 2009
By Jan Roch, BBC, Sao Paulo, Oct. 27, 2009
Twenty four years after the military left power in Brazil, the government is to create a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed by the security forces between 1964 and 1985.
Brazil is the only country in Latin America which has not investigated deaths, disappearances and torture which took place during its dictatorship, or put alleged perpetrators on trial.
Although the number of victims is far smaller than those who died during military rule in neighbouring Argentina and Chile, nearly 500 people were killed or disappeared in Brazil. Thousands more were tortured, exiled or deprived of their political rights.
All attempts to bring people to justice have foundered on the blanket provisions of the 1979 Amnesty Law.
This not only authorised the release of political prisoners and the return of exiled opponents, but amnestied all political crimes and “connected crimes”, which was understood to mean torture.
Now, just a year before he leaves office, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has decided to set up a commission to investigate crimes committed during the dictatorship. Several of his ministers were themselves arrested and tortured by the military.
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Posted by svolk on October 17th, 2009
Latin American Herald (Caracas), Oct. 17, 2009
SANTIAGO – The Chilean government said it will invoke a controversial Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law to prosecute acts of violence in the southern region of Araucania, where armed Mapuche Indian militants have set two trucks on fire over the past 48 hours.
“We’ve taken the decision to invoke the Anti-Terrorist Law to prosecute these groups of people who only want to cause disorder, commit crimes and stir up trouble in a region that wants a peaceful path” to resolving land disputes, Deputy Interior Minister Patricio Rosende said.
“We’re not going to allow or tolerate actions of this type again by these groups,” Rosende said, referring to the protesters’ burning of two trucks and other acts of violence in recent days.
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Posted by svolk on September 2nd, 2009
NPR, September 2, 2009:
Listen to the Story
A judge in Chile has issued arrest warrants for more than 100 former security officials. They are accused of the worst killings and other human rights violations during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archives in Washington, talks with Ari Shapiro about the crimes committed during the so-called “dirty war.”
Posted in: Chile, Dirty Wars, Legal Justice, Pinochet | No Comments »
Posted by svolk on September 2nd, 2009
Por J. Escalante / J. Rebolledo / La Nación (Chile), 2 septiembre 2009
Entre los encartados hay al menos 60 nuevos ex agentes que hasta ahora no habían caído en las redes de la justicia por delitos de lesa humanidad. Del total de procesados, todos en retiro, 50 son del Ejército y el resto de la FACh, Armada, Investigaciones y Carabineros.
El más masivo procesamiento en la historia de los juicios por violaciones de los derechos humanos, dictó ayer el juez Víctor Montiglio en contra de 120 ex agentes, todos de la DINA.
Entre los encausados hay cerca de 60 nuevos ex represores que hasta ahora no habían sido procesados en algún juicio por delitos de lesa humanidad cometidos durante la dictadura.
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Posted by svolk on September 2nd, 2009
Pascale Bonnefoy, Global Post.com, Sept. 1, 2009, 19:45 ET
A Chilean judge ordered today the arrest and indictment of more than 120 former intelligence agents from the Pinochet dictatorship under charges of crimes against humanity in three major operations that took place in the 1970s.
Judge Victor Montiglio’s decision marked the first massive indictment for human rights crimes here since the courts began serious efforts in 2000 to investigate human rights violations during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).
The crimes include the disappearance of the entire Communist party leadership in 1976, in a case known as “calle Conferencia,” in reference to the street where they were abducted, and an operation known as “Colombo,” in which 119 opponents were made to disappear in 1975. This was a scandalous case — the regime, with the cooperation of its counterparts in Argentina and Brazil, mounted a cover-up operation by fabricating newspapers in those countries listing the names of the victims as having been killed in political infighting within their own organizations.
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Posted in: Chile, Dirty Wars, Human Rights, Justice, Legal Justice, Operation Condor, Pinochet, Victor Montiglio | No Comments »
Posted by svolk on August 27th, 2009
Lisa Skeen
The announcement on June 25 that Spain will begin to limit its application of universal jurisdiction garnered no more than a humble blip in international media coverage. The principle, which asserts that certain crimes are so egregious that they are an affront to all humanity and therefore prosecutable by any nation, is at the center of fierce philosophical debate in international law. But for survivors of genocide in Guatemala, universal jurisdiction has represented something much more tangible—an important avenue for justice against the lingering impunity left in the wake Latin America’s dirty wars.
Spain’s lower house of Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of narrowing universal jurisdiction so that crimes committed outside of Spain may only be prosecuted if Spanish citizens are affected.
The six judges that make up Spain’s Audencia Nacional are currently handling thirteen diverse cases from all over the world, including several from Latin America. Spain has assured the human rights community that the change will not affect cases under investigation or those currently being tried.
Although the judges have been hailed by rights activists, their recent high-profile investigations into rights abuses by American, Israeli and Chinese government officials have created a diplomatic headache for Spain’s politicians, who pressed Parliament to pass the resolution.
While Washington has admitted to quietly pressuring the Spanish government to drop the investigations into allegations of U.S. torture at Guantanamo, Israel was outspoken in its criticism of the court’s decision to investigate a claim that Israeli forces had committed war crimes in Gaza in 2002. The investigation has since been dropped.
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Posted in: Argentina, Genocide, Guatemala, Justice, Rios Montt, Spain, Universal jurisdiction | No Comments »
Posted by svolk on August 23rd, 2009
Hugh O’Shaughnessy, The Independent on Sunday, August 23, 2009
British authorities and the financial sector are linked for the first time to the late Chilean dictator’s £1bn fortune. Hugh O’Shaughnessy reports
AFP / GETTY IMAGES
Santiago, 1988 Pinochet watches F-16 warplanes fly past. Much of his wealth came from military procurement
Two-and-a-half years after the death of General Augusto Pinochet, a report by the Chilean police task force charged with investigating money-laundering has claimed that British authorities and the financial sector were complicit in hiding his massive ill-gotten fortune.
Though the Pinochet family protects the details of its wealth with the help of bankers and advisers from Britain and other countries, the pile of assets in cash, gold, government bonds and shares controlled by the family of the late dictator is now believed to amount to as much as £1bn.
The report by Brilac, the Chilean police task force, says that the freeze on the dictator’s funds issued in 1998 by the Spanish investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon, who was seeking the ex-dictator’s extradition to Spain on charges of torture and murder, was in effect ignored by the financial sector in Britain, despite the fact that Britain was under an obligation to enforce it.
Professor David Sugarman, the director of the Centre for Law and Society at Lancaster University and author of a forthcoming book on Pinochet’s arrest and imprisonment, said yesterday: “It looks like some of the banks holding Pinochet’s funds did not comply with the letter and spirit of their duties of disclosure, due diligence and the legal requirement to report suspicious circumstances.”
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