Dirty Wars and Democracy

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.”

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

El Diario / La Prensa
March 9, 2009

El abogado Javier Gómez en declaraciones a la radio Cooperativa dijo que enviará una carta a la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos mediante correo electrónico.

“Estamos impulsando esta carta ante la falla de las instancias judiciales de nuestro país”, dijo el abogado de Contreras.

“Los derechos humanos no es monopolio de ningún sector político ni de un país, nos benefician a todos por el hecho de ser persona, y entre esas personas está Manuel Contreras”, señaló el abogado.

Dijo que también demandará la inmediata liberación de su cliente desde el penal Cordillera, exclusivo para violadores de los derechos humanos, y que se le aplique la medida cautelar de arresto domiciliario.

“No se han respetado las garantías básicas que da la Convención Interamericana de Derechos Humanos para toda persona que se somete a juicio”, declaró el abogado.

Contreras, 79 años, creó y encabezó la Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, DINA, la policía represiva de la dictadura de Pinochet, tras el derrocamiento del presidente socialista Salvador Allende en 1973.

A la DINA y a su sucesora, la Central Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI, se le atribuyen las peores violaciones a los derechos humanos bajo el régimen militar y el mayor número de detenidos desaparecidos.

Contreras está condenado a cerca de 300 años de cárcel entre las sentencias definitivas y por confirmar. Ingresó al penal Cordillera cuando cumplía arresto domiciliario, luego que la Corte Suprema confirmó su sentencia a 12 años por su responsabilidad en la desaparición de un joven comunista.

Antes cumplió una sentencia de 7 años de presidio por el asesinato en Washington del ex canciller socialista chileno Orlando Letelier.

Mireya García, dirigente de la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, calificó la acción de Contreras y su abogado como “incalificable”.

“Me parece una burla y una nueva agresión para las víctimas”, afirmó.

Latin American Herald Tribune (Caracas): Dec. 31, 2008

SANTIAGO — The Chilean Supreme Court has reduced sentences handed down to five agents of the country’s 1973-1990 military regime for the disappearance of two leftists, judiciary officials said.

The ruling, which cannot be appealed, was issued in a case involving the kidnapping and disappearance of Carmen Diaz Daricarrere and Eugenio Ivan Montti Cordero, two members of the Revolutionary Left Movement who were detained on Feb. 13, 1975, in Santiago by agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s notorious secret police force, known as DINA.

Daricarrere was a nursing student at the University of Chile while Montti had completed his engineering studies at the State Technical University; survivors have testified to seeing them at DINA’s “Villa Grimaldi” torture and detention center before trace of them was lost.

On Jan. 21, an appeals court in Santiago had upheld a 15-year sentence given to ex-DINA chief retired Gen. Manuel Contreras and two erstwhile colonels, Marcelo Moren Brito and Rolf Wenderoth.

That court also sentenced ex-Brig. Gen. Miguel Krasnoff and former non-commissioned officer Basclay Zapata to five years behind bars.

But the Supreme Court, in a 3-2 ruling, reduced Contreras’ sentence to seven years; the judges also reduced the sentences for Moren and Wenderoth to four years each and those of Krasnoff and Zapata to 541 days.

All of these individuals, however, are currently in prison serving sentences for other human rights violations. In the case of the 79-year-old Contreras, he has already been sentenced to two life terms for kidnappings, forced disappearances and extrajudicial assassinations.

In another 3-2 decision Friday, the Supreme Court ruled against victims’ family members who had sued the state for reparations for the dictatorship-era crimes.

The 1973-1990 regime headed by Pinochet, who died in December 2006 of a heart attack at the age of 91, is blamed for some 3,000 deaths, and many of the bodies have never been found.

The Latin Americanist (Dec. 22, 2008)

Last week we briefly mentioned the outrage in Argentina over a judge’s order to free fourteen men convicted of “Dirty War” atrocities. Though the leader of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo deemed the decision as a “slap in the face,” the court decided that the men were held for several years without facing trial.

Only hours after the court’s asinine decision, another Argentine court prevented the travesty of justice:

An Argentine high court Friday suspended a controversial decision to grant bail to high-profile defendants accused of torturing and killing dissidents during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

The court instead sent the cases to the Supreme Court after prosecutor Raul Plee appealed the ruling. The decision will keep the suspects behind bars until the Supreme Court ruling, at a date still to be determined.

One of those originally to be freed on bail was Alfredo Astiz, known as the “Blond Angel of Death” (image). Astiz had been held over the disappearance of two French nuns, a Swedish adolescent and the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Image- BBC News
Sources- The Latin Americanist, BBC News, AP, Reuters, AFP

Crusading Judge’s Exit From Probe Of Civil War-Era Mass
Graves May Leave Truth In The Ground
By Christine Spolar
Chicago Tribune November 19, 2008

PINILLA DE LA VALDERIA, Spain-Many people in this
verdant countryside know their hills and valleys hide a
terrible treasure from the Spanish Civil War: Skeletons
of loved ones, just a few generations gone. Read the rest of this entry »

El País, 20 de noviembre de 2008

Unos 30 intelectuales artistas y familiares de la víctimas del franquismo han presentado hoy en Madrid un manifiesto de apoyo al juez Garzón. El documento, con el título ‘Hemos conocido’ cuenta con el respaldo del premio Nobel de Literatura José Saramago, el escritor argentino Ernesto Sábato, el historiador Ian Gibson o el cantautor Paco Ibánez, quien ha presentado el manifiesto junto a Cristina Almeida en el círculo de Bellas Artes

A partir de ahora el texto podrá firmarse. Sus promotores quieren entregarlo con el mayor número de apoyos al Gobierno el próximo 14 de abril, día en que se conmemora la proclamación de la Segunda República. .

Durante la presentación del manifiesto, el presidente de la Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, Emilio Silva, ha denunciado que el fiscal de la Audiencia Nacional que se opuso a que el juez Garzón instruyera el caso de las fosas ha hecho “injusticia” con una mano y “política” con la otra.

El representante de la asociación ha afirmado que lo que ha hecho Garzón es una “inhibición activa”, gracias a la cual “da a conocer los hechos” sucedidos bajo la dictadura franquista “tal como fueron”.

Además, un grupo de unos 40 juristas suscribe hoy otro manifiesto de Amnistía Internacional con el título ‘Para pasar página primero hay que leerla’ en el que se denuncia que la justicia española haya investigado crímenes contra la humanidad en varios países y se hayan abstenido de hacerlo en su propio Estado.

New York Times, November 19, 2008

By VICTORIA BURNETT

MADRID — A high-profile judge on Tuesday dropped a sensitive inquiry into atrocities that took place during the era of Franco, Spain’s former dictator, ending what had promised to be the first criminal investigation of wrongs committed by Franco and his allies.

The judge, Baltasar Garzón, last month declared himself competent to investigate the killings of 114,000 people at the hands of Franco’s supporters during the 1936-1939 civil war and the dictatorship that followed and ordered the exhumation of at least 19 mass graves. He accused Franco and 34 former generals and ministers of crimes against humanity.

However, Judge Garzón said Tuesday that he was dropping the case against Franco and his allies after state prosecutors questioned his jurisdiction over crimes committed 70 years ago by people who are now dead and whose crimes were covered by an amnesty passed in 1977. In a 152-page statement, he passed responsibility to regional courts for opening 19 mass graves believed to hold the remains of hundreds of victims, including those of Federico García Lorca, the Spanish poet. Read the rest of this entry »