30 países revisan su pasado más trágico y dejan en evidencia la escasa implicación del Gobierno español – Asociaciones de familiares han desenterrado ya 4.000 víctimas de la Guerra Civil

NATALIA JUNQUERA El País 17/11/2008

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Políticas de memoria y reparación a las víctimas

- Argentina. Anuló las leyes de Obediencia Debida y Punto final (similares a una amnistía), juzgó y condenó a los represores y convirtió el símbolo del terror practicado por las juntas militares durante la dictadura (1976-1983), la ESMA, en un Museo de la Memoria.

– Chile. Las primeras excavaciones de fosas comunes comienzan durante la dictadura de Pinochet (1973-1990), lideradas por la Iglesia. Familiares de más de 3.000 ejecutados y de casi 30.000 torturados reciben pensiones económicas y servicios gratuitos. La presidenta del país fue víctima.

– Guatemala. El estado corre con los gastos de las exhumaciones en cementerios clandestinos e indemniza a las víctimas. Cuenta con el apoyo de la iglesia.

- Marruecos. El Rey Mohamed VI creó una comisión de la verdad para investigar las desapariciones, detenciones, torturas, violaciones y ejecuciones cometidas entre 1956-1999. Pidió perdón a las víctimas y se comprometió a hacer cambios en su Constitución para evitar que lo ocurrido se volviera a repetir.

– Suráfrica. Reconoció los terribles crímenes en audiencias públicas. No juzgó a los culpables. Estableció medidas de compensación económica para las víctimas difíciles de cumplir en el contexto de pobreza que vive el país.

- Alemania.Las potencias vencedoras de la Segunda Guerra mundial ya habían destruido los símbolos nazis. La cuestión más controvertida era el derecho. En 1998, el Parlamento aprobó una ley que anulaba las sentencias dictadas por el Tribunal Popular o en juicios militares sumarísimos.

Full article below the fold Read the rest of this entry »

Reed Brody, New Statesman , Oct 16, 2008

On October 16, 1998, London police arrested General Pinochet on a warrant from a Spanish judge for human rights crimes. It was a wake up call to tyrants everywhere

In the ten years since, the world has become a smaller place for brutal despots. Indeed, today a former dictator accused of thousands of killings and “disappearances,” as Pinochet was, wouldn’t even think of a European vacation.

The arrest and the subsequent decisions by the British House of Lords to reject Pinochet’s claim of immunity were a wake-up call to tyrants everywhere, but more important, they gave hope to victims elsewhere that they too could bring their tormentors to justice.

In country after country, particularly in Latin America, victims were inspired to challenge the transitional arrangements of the 1980s and 1990s that had allowed the perpetrators of atrocities to go unpunished and, often, to remain in power. Thanks to these efforts, former leaders in Argentina, Peru and Uruguay face human rights trials.

Pinochet’s arrest also strengthened a nascent international movement – spurred by the killings in Bosnia and Rwanda, and facilitated by the end of the Cold War – to make certain the worst abuses are punished.

After the creation of UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the world established the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.

Read the rest of this entry »

From the Guardian.

10 years of the Pinochet principle

The arrest warrant served on the Chilean head of state in 1998 changed history and has implications for the US government now

On October 16 1998, a magistrate signed a warrant for the arrest of Senator Augusto Pinochet and changed the course of history. The former Chilean head of state was arrested a few hours later, at the request of a Spanish prosecutor who charged him with a raft of international crimes, some dating back to the early 1970s. Over the next 18 months, one dramatic development followed another. The House of Lords rendered three landmark judgments in the space of five months; home secretary Jack Straw defied expectations by giving a green light to the continuation of proceedings that could lead to Pinochet’s removal to Madrid; Pinochet made a dramatic appearance in the dock at Belmarsh magistrate’s court; and eventually Straw decided that Pinochet was too unhealthy to stand trial and he was returned to Chile in April 2000. For the rest of his life he was dogged by legal proceedings.

One central question lay at the heart of the whole affair: was a former head of state entitled to claim immunity before the English courts, where it was alleged that he had participated in crimes, in violation of international conventions, such as torture? This question had never before been decided. It pitted two competing views of international relations against each other: traditionalists argued that the maintenance of serene relations between states required the courts of one state to refrain from sitting in judgment over the highest officials of another; the modernists argued that no person was above the law where the most serious international crimes were involved, and that the system of human rights laws put in place after the second world war substituted a rule of immunity with a new rule against impunity. Read the rest of this entry »

This is an article from BBC News. The link is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7673056.stmChile’s supreme court has jailed five retired senior military officers over the killing of dozens of government opponents under military rule.The officers were all members of a military committee known as the Caravan of Death, which criss-crossed the country killing suspected leftists.Their crimes date back to shortly after the late Gen Augusto Pinochet took power in a military coup in 1973.The head of the committee, Gen Sergio Arellano Stark, is now 88.He was jailed for six years for ordering the murder of four men at a military prison in Linares, southern Chile.One of the other officers was also sentenced to six years, and the other three received four-year terms.”It’s great news, above all for the families of all the victims of the Caravan of Death which, we now know, got its orders to murder and kill from Arellano Stark,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Hugo Gutierrez said after sentence was passed.But Arellano’s lawyer, Claudio Arellano Parker, described the sentence as “extraordinarily unjust”.He said his client was in no condition to understand the proceedings of the trial. 

International Herald Tribune, Aug. 29, 2008

Buenos Aires: An Argentine court sentenced two former generals to life in prison on Thursday over the disappearance of a provincial senator during the 1976-1983 “dirty war” dictatorship.

Human rights activists and relatives of the victim chanted “murderers” as the verdict was read out for Antonio Domingo Bussi, who was military governor of the northern province of Tucuman, and his superior, Luciano Benjamin Menendez.

Up to 30,000 people disappeared during Argentina’s dirty war in a state crackdown on leftist dissent. Hundreds of people were kidnapped and killed in Tucuman alone, rights groups say.

Bussi, 82, who wept during Thursday’s hearing, built a political career after democracy returned to Argentina in 1983. He was elected in 1995 as governor of Tucuman, a sugar- and citrus-growing province that is among the country’s poorest.

At his trial, Bussi said he had sought to save his province and the country from communist aggression. He denied participating in the disappearance of former provincial senator Guillermo Vargas Aignasse, seized in 1976.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the courtroom to hear the verdict. Scuffles broke out as some reacted angrily to the possibility the generals could serve the sentence at home or in a military facility instead of a prison.

The court is set to announce where they will serve their sentences next month.

Menendez, 80, was in charge of several provinces in the country, making him Bussi’s boss. In a separate ruling last month, he was given a life sentence in a prison for his role in the torture and killing of four leftists 31 years ago.

Under ex-President Nestor Kirchner, courts and Congress scrapped pardons for military personnel involved in human rights crimes during the dictatorship. Since then courts have tried and convicted several military leaders of rights crimes.

(Reporting by Cesar Illiano and Lucas Bergman; Writing by Helen Popper; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Whatever It Takes

The politics of the man behind “24.”

by Jane Mayer, February 19, 2007

The office desk of Joel Surnow—the co-creator and executive producer of “24,” the popular counterterrorism drama on Fox—faces a wall dominated by an American flag in a glass case. A small label reveals that the flag once flew over Baghdad, after the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. A few years ago, Surnow received it as a gift from an Army regiment stationed in Iraq; the soldiers had shared a collection of “24” DVDs, he told me, until it was destroyed by an enemy bomb. “The military loves our show,” he said recently.

The full article in the New Yorker was published on Feb. 19, 2007 [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_mayer]

A video discussion of “24″ and torture is posted on You Tube

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/JTzVNtfknPQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

On April 27, 2008, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke with CBS’s 60 Minutes’ reporter Lesley Stahl, arguing that the torture didn’t really fit the 8th Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person — if you listen to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?

SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think — Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.

STAHL: Well I think if you’re in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody–

SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you? What’s he punishing you for? … When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

Take a look:[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/GX3MkfAtKmI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX3MkfAtKmI

July 25, 2008, New York Times

By Alexei Barrrionuevo

RIO DE JANEIRO — A court in Argentina sentenced a notorious former military leader to life in prison for atrocities committed in 1977 at a clandestine torture center used by the military dictatorship where only 17 of more than 2,200 political prisoners survived.

Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, the former commander of the regional Third Army Corps in Córdoba during the military dictatorship, oversaw the kidnapping, torture and murder of four activists who protested against the military government that lasted from 1976 to 1983. The atrocities occurred at La Perla detention center in Córdoba, the biggest in the province at the time. 

After a trial lasting almost two months, the court on Thursday also sentenced six other former military officers and one civilian for crimes committed during the military regime. Four of them were also given life sentences, with remaining three receiving sentences ranging from 18 to 22 years in prison, Argentine newspapers reported.

Mr. Menéndez, 81, was stone-faced and silent as the televised verdict was read to loud cheers inside and outside the courtroom, where hundreds of people waved flags and placards commemorating the victims.

“Today justice was done,” the daughter of one of the victims told the television channel Todo Noticias.

The convictions on Thursday were the latest of “dirty war” suspects to be judged by Argentine courts. Some 13,000 people were killed during the dictatorship, according to official figures, although human rights groups say the figure is closer to 30,000.

The Supreme Court in 2005 struck down amnesty laws from the 1980s that had protected former military officials who served during the dictatorship, The Associated Press reported.

“This is a decision that should be celebrated as an example that accountability is possible,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

The retired general was under house arrest for convictions related to the military regime’s “dirty war” against accused leftists. He will now be transferred to prison.

The four victims — Hilda Palacios, Humberto Brandalisis, Carlos Lajas and Raúl Cardozo — were members of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party who were kidnapped on Dec. 15, 1977.

Prosecutors said that the four were taken to La Perla, which was run by the Third Army Corps, and killed the next month. Their bodies were dumped in the street to make it appear as if they had been killed in an exchange of gunfire with the military. Only the remains of Ms. Palacios were found and returned to family members.

July 1, 2008, New York Times

By PASCALE BONNEFOY

A Chilean judge sentenced the former secret intelligence chief for Gen. Augusto Pinochet to two life terms for the 1974 murder of Carlos Prat, former commander in chief of the Chilean Army, and his wife, Sofia Cuthbert. They were killed when a bomb placed under their car exploded as they returned home to their apartment in Buenos Aires. Judge Alejandro Solis sentenced Manuel Contreras, the former director of the intelligence service, known as DINA, and seven other military and civilian agents involved with the intelligence service.

June 30, 2008 [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/42711.html]

By Helen Hughes and Jack Chang | McClatchy Newspapers

SANTIAGO, Chile — A Chilean judge sentenced the country’s former intelligence chief, retired Gen. Manuel Contreras, to two life prison terms Monday for masterminding a double assassination that was one of the most notorious covert operations conducted by this country’s military government.

The historic court decision, which can be appealed, holds Contreras responsible for the murders of Gen. Carlos Prats, the former army chief, and his wife in a 1974 bombing attack in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.

The sentence is the biggest to be handed out so far in this country’s ongoing human rights prosecutions and should help resolve what was long one of the most painful episodes of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s rule.

Justice Minister Carlos Maldonado applauded the verdict, calling the assassinations “a terrorist attack in another country” and pledging the government’s commitment to bringing justice to the regime’s victims.

U.S. journalist John Dinges, who’s written two books about the Pinochet regime’s abuses, said Monday’s decision was a landmark in the human rights prosecutions.

“This is as monumental a human rights action as has been taken in all this long history of human rights adjudication in Chile,” Dinges said. “You have members of the Chilean military now convicted of assassinating a former chief. That’s enormous. That takes it way beyond human rights and takes it to an attack on the state.”

The murders of Prats and Sofia Cuthbert consolidated the rise of Pinochet’s authoritarian regime, which was responsible for the politically motivated deaths and disappearances of some 3,000 people during its 17 years in power.

Pinochet’s replacement of Prats as army chief set the stage for the 1973 coup that ousted socialist President Salvador Allende. According to court testimony, the Pinochet regime then sent U.S. citizen Michael Townley to plant a bomb under Prats’ car in Argentina.

On Chilean orders, Townley went on to assassinate former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, also by planting a car bomb. That 1976 attack, in a neighborhood known as Embassy Row, was the first case of foreign-sponsored terrorism on U.S. soil.

Appellate Judge Alejandro Solis, who was assigned to investigate the Prats case, sentenced eight others to prison Monday for their roles in the assassination, but not Townley, who couldn’t be prosecuted because he lives in the United States.

Townley, who testified to Argentine and Chilean courts about the Prats assassination and has been a U.S. government-protected witness, was released after he served half of a 10-year prison sentence in the United States following his guilty plea in the Letelier case.

The others sentenced Monday included Townley’s ex-wife, Mariana Callejas, who joined her then-husband on the bombing mission, and other Chilean army officials such as retired Gen. Raul Iturriaga and retired Col. Pedro Espinoza.

Chilean courts already have convicted Contreras for other dictatorship-era crimes, and the retired general has been confined to a military prison on the outskirts of Santiago, the capital. His attorney, Fidel Reyes, declined to comment Monday.

For Contreras, once one of the most feared men in Chile, Monday’s sentencing finishes his fall from power.

Contreras, who’s now 79, was the main author of Operation Condor, an informal pact among the continent’s military governments to share intelligence, help one another track down and trade dissidents and conduct assassinations such as Letelier’s.

In Argentina, Prats had drawn Pinochet’s ire by speaking out against the Chilean regime’s abuses and calling for a return to democracy, and Contreras quickly moved to eliminate him.

Prats’ daughters said Monday that the judge’s decision was a crucial step toward documenting the Pinochet regime’s crimes, but they added that they’d hoped to see Pinochet himself convicted. The former dictator died in December 2006 of complications from a heart attack without having been tried. Contreras has testified that he acted under Pinochet’s orders in several human rights cases.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t happen,” Cecilia Prats said of a Pinochet conviction. “But the country knows clearly that he was part of this group of people that attacked our parents.”

(Hughes is a McClatchy special correspondent. Chang reported from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2008