Dirty Wars and Democracy

AFP, August 7, 2009

BRASILIA — Brazil’s Supreme Court has approved the extradition to Argentina of retired Uruguayan military officer, Manuel Cordero, wanted for his role in Operation Condor, a plan to eliminate political opponents., in the 1970s

The top Brazilian court said Thursday that Cordero faces several charges, including responsibility for the 1976 “disappearance” of Argentine child Aldaberto Soba Fernandes.

The charges are linked to Cordero’s involvement in Operation Condor, the secret plan hatched by South American dictators in the 1970s to eliminate their political opponents in the region.

He is wanted by Argentina for the torture, disappearance and killings of leftist Uruguayan activists in 1976 in the “Automotores Orletti” secret detention center in Buenos Aires.

Cordero, 70, has been under house arrest since December 19, avoiding prison due to an earlier heart surgery. He married a Brazilian woman 32 years ago.

After three years at large, the former Uruguayan Army colonel and intelligence officer was arrested in February 2007 in the Brazilian city of Santana do Livramento, just across the border with Uruguay.

Uruguay has also requested Cordero’s extradition but he is being sent to Argentina because that is where the alleged crimes took place.

Pagina 12, Viernes, 19 de Junio de 2009

Deben seguir cumpliendo la pena perpetua impuesta en el Juicio a las Juntas. El tribunal aclaró que la sentencia de Massera sigue vigente más allá de que fue declarado “incapaz” y que podría ser trasladado a un “establecimiento médico psiquiátrico”.

Los indultos que concedió el ex presidente Carlos Menem a los dictadores Jorge Rafael Videla y Emilio Eduardo Massera en 1990 fueron declarados inconstitucionales por la Cámara Nacional de Casación Penal. La decisión, que ratifica un fallo de la Cámara Federal, deja firmes las condenas a reclusión perpetua que ambos represores habían recibido en 1985 en el marco del Juicio a las Juntas

Read the rest of this entry »

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009 10.22 BST

Victor Jara, who was killed in the first few days of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Photograph: Reuters

It was the atrocity which symbolised Chile’s descent into dictatorship: soldiers used rifle butts to smash the hands of Victor Jara, a political activist and folk singer, so he could not play guitar. Then they shot him 44 times.

Yesterday, almost 36 years later, justice caught up with one of killers. José Adolfo Paredes Márquez, a former conscript in Augusto Pinochet’s army, was charged with murder.

The burly 54-year-old was tracked down in San Sebastian, a spa town outside the capital Santiago, where he was working as a waiter and gardener.

Activists who have campaigned for the case to be reopened welcomed the announcement but urged authorities to focus on arresting commanding officers. “There are other people responsible – those who ordered the torture and the execution,” said Joan Turner Jara, the singer’s English-born widow.

Jara, a political songwriter and poet and high-profile supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, was among thousands swept up in the aftermath of Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup in September 1973. The author of El cigarrito and Manifiesto was herded into Santiago’s football stadium which was used as a mass jail.

Soldiers broke the musician’s hands before shooting him in the head and riddling his body with bullets, one of 3,100 murders committed by Pinochet’s forces during military rule which lasted until 1990, when democracy returned to the South American country.

After the rightwing dictator died in 2006 activists stepped up efforts to find Jara’s killers despite apparent foot-dragging by prosecutors and the army.

In 2008 the case was closed after Mario Manriquez, a retired army colonel who was commanding officer at the stadium, was found guilty of the murder but was deemed not to have pulled the trigger.

Judge Juan Fuentes reopened the investigation after fresh evidence was presented and earlier this month Paredes was tracked down. The former conscript, who was 18 when the crime was committed, confessed his participation but said blame rested with commanding officers.

Campaigners have long sought a notoriously brutal commander, a tall, fair-haired officer nicknamed “El Principe” (The Prince), as the man mostly responsible. Paredes has identified him as Nelson Edgardo Haase Mazzei, a former lieutenant. He allegedly remained seated at a desk while ordering conscripts to torture and shoot prisoners, including Jara.

The stadium has since been named after its most famous victim.

Por Jacmel Cuevas P, especial para CIPER

A casi cuatro meses de conmemorarse 36 años de la muerte del destacado folclorista chileno, el tesón de su viuda Joan Turner y de sus hijas, logró que la investigación judicial llegara al punto que se creía imposible: individualizar al grupo de oficiales y conscriptos que perpetraron el asesinato. Las confesiones de los involucrados, entre ellos un conscripto que participó en forma directa en el crimen, permiten conocer las estremecedoras últimas horas de vida de Víctor Jara: un subteniente jugó a la ruleta rusa con él hasta que le descerrajó un tiro en su cabeza. Después ordenaron acribillarlo en un camarín de un subterráneo del Estadio Chile. También revelamos la historia nunca antes contada de cómo se rescató su cuerpo desde la Morgue. Junto al artista, fueron acribilladas otras 15 personas, entre los que se encontraba el ex Director de Prisiones, Litre Quiroga. Los detalles del homicidio fueron recabados en la presente investigación de Ciper.

Read the rest of this entry »

Associated Press, updated 1:27 p.m. ET, Mon., April 20, 2009

SANTIAGO, Chile – A retired army general and two other officers have been indicted in the killing of 14 dissidents in the early days of the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

The Santiago Court of Appeals says judge Victor Montiglio indicted Gen. Gonzalo Santelices, Maj. Patricio Ferrer and Lt. Pablo Martinez as accomplices in the killings in 1973 in northern Chile.

The three retired officers were being held Monday at a military barracks.

The killings are tied to the Caravan of Death, a military party that left more than 90 political prisoners dead as it traversed the country shortly after the 1973 military coup led by Pinochet.

At the time of his retirement in 2008, Santelices was commander of the Santiago army garrison, Chile’s largest.

Upside Down World, April 11, 2009

Source: Mimundo.org
Versión en español aquí..

On January 1976, General Kjell Laugerud, former President of Guatemala, signed the first loan accord with the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) for the construction of the Pueblo Viejo-Quixal hydroelectric plant (1977-1983). Such project included the “flooding of the Chixoy River basin and much of its valley. The newly erected reservoir would directly affect and forcibly disappear 23 villages or localities (affecting around 3,445 residents), 45 archaeological sites, numerous crop areas and natural resources.” Known today as the Chixoy Reservoir, the artificial lake measures approximately 50 KM in length and reaches up to 50 meters in depth. (1)
“During the years of the military dictatorships, various administration and management positions in government-run offices were held by military personnel: the main directors of the National Electrification Institute (INDE in Spanish) and Departmental Governor posts are some examples.” The INDE was directly in charge of the construction and management of the Pueblo Viejo-Quixal hydroelectric plant. (2) Read the rest of this entry »

 BBC News; 17:55 GMT, Tuesday, 7 April 2009 18:55 UK

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been sentenced to 25 years in jail for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.

Mr Fujimori’s trial was suspended several times due to his poor health

At the end of a 15-month trial, judges found him guilty of two death-squad killings of 25 people during the conflict with guerrillas in the 1990s.

After being sentenced, Mr Fujimori said he would appeal against the verdict.

Human rights group Amnesty International described the verdict as “a milestone in the fight for justice”.

“Justice has been done in Peru. This is an historic day,” said the group’s spokesman, Javier Zuniga.

“It is not every day when a former head of state is convicted for human rights violations such as torture, kidnapping and enforced disappearances.

“We hope that it is just the first of many trials in both Latin America and throughout the world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Avilés , El Universal [Mexico City]
Viernes 27 de marzo de 2009
Ordenan libertad absoluta para el ex presidente. Un tribunal federal no halló elementos para juzgarlo por genocidio 

El ex presidente Luis Echeverría Álvarez quedó libre de toda culpa de la matanza de estudiantes del2 de octubre de 1968.

Un tribunal federal ordenó ayer decretar la libertad absoluta del ex mandatario, quien permanecía en prisión domiciliaria desde noviembre de 2006, luego de que no se encontraron elementos para juzgarlo por el delito de genocidio que le atribuyó la desaparecida Fiscalía Especial para Movimientos Sociales y Políticos del Pasado (Femospp).

Se trata del juicio penal más importante de la historia moderna del país, aseguró Juan Velásquez, el abogado del ex mandatario, quien en compañía de su compañero de litigios Heraclio Bonilla, acudió ayer alrededor de las 18:00 horas a la casa del ex mandatario, en San Jerónimo, a darle la sorpresa de que, finalmente, había ganado el juicio.

Un par de años antes, como parte de las acusaciones que formuló en su contra la Fiscalía, Echeverría también fue exonerado del delito de genocidio en torno a la matanza de estudiantes registrada el 10 de junio de 1971, conocida como El Halconazo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Written by By Kate Doyle and Jesse Franzblau; Monday, 23 March 2009: Upside Down World

Source: The National Security Archive

Declassified documents show U.S. Embassy knew that Guatemalan security forces were behind wave of abductions of students and labor leaders. National Security Archive calls for release of military files and investigation into intellectual authors of the 1984 abduction of Fernando García and other disappearances.

Following a stunning breakthrough in a 25-year-old case of political terror in Guatemala, the National Security Archive today [March 17,2008] is posting declassified U.S. documents about the disappearance of Edgar Fernando García, a student leader and trade union activist captured by Guatemalan security forces in 1984. The documents show that García’s capture was an organized political abduction orchestrated at the highest levels of the Guatemalan government.

Guatemalan authorities made the first arrest ever in the long-dormant kidnapping case when they detained Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos, a senior police officer in Quezaltenango, on March 5th and retired policeman Abraham Lancerio Gómez on March 6th as a result of an investigation into García’s abduction by Guatemala’s Human Rights Prosecutor (Procurador de Derechos Humanos—PDH). Arrest warrants have been issued for two more suspects, Hugo Rolando Gómez Osorio and Alfonso Guillermo de León Marroquín. The two are former officers with the notorious Special Operations Brigade (BROE) of the National Police, a unit linked to death squad activities during the 1980s by human rights groups. Read the rest of this entry »

The Latinamericanist.com – March 24, 2009

Another dimension has been added to the troublesome aspect of adoptions in Guatemala when the government revealed yesterday that civil war orphans had been placed up for adoption.

According to the government investigation, there has been at least one confirmed case of two children illegally put up for adoption after their parents were killed in Guatemala’s civil war. Evidence suggests that hundreds of other orphans from the country’s 36-year war were put up for adoption and were likely taken in by U.S. families said the director of the government’s Peace Archive, Marco Tulio Alvarez.

Alvarez added that the final report is expected to be revealed by next month. Yet what they uncovered was reminiscent of “Dirty War” orphans illegally adopted in Argentina:

“In the analysis carried out, patterns of activity can be established that show the ease with which the adoption procedures were handled to hide the violation of rights of Guatemalan children through forced disappearance,” he said.

Alvarez did not rule out that members of Guatemala’s police and armed forces could be implicated in the selling of the children.

He said that during the civil war, the children of people “disappeared” by the security forces were sent to government-run orphanages, and that some of those youngsters were then sold to adoptive parents.

“In these cases, many human rights of the children were violated” and all the indications found so far “make one think that the business was very profitable”, Alvarez said.

Guatemala had been one of the main sources for adoption by U.S. parents for many years with nearly 5000 kids adopted in 2006. Yet the State Department put a halt to Guatemalan adoptions last September citing the lack of “regulations and infrastructure necessary to meet its obligations under the convention.”

Online Sources- AP, thandian.com, BBC News, Washington Times