Elliott Abrams' Dark History in Latin America and the Struggle for Justice

[Judi Lynn]

Elliott Abrams' Dark History in Latin America and the Struggle for Justice
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Friday, 03 February 2012 19:07

Elliott Abrams, a former high level State Department official during the 1980s, testified last week that the Reagan administration knew that Argentina's military junta was systematically stealing babies from murdered and jailed democracy activists and giving them to right-wing families friendly to the regime.

In a meeting with the Junta's ambassador in Washington on December 3, 1982, Abrams suggested that the dictatorship could "improve its image" by creating a process with the Catholic Church of returning the children, some of whom were born in secret torture chambers, to their legitimate families. The contents of this meeting were recorded in a memo Abrams wrote, which was declassified by the State Department in 2002 and is now a key piece of evidence against former junta officials in this high profile trial.

“While the disappeared were dead, these children were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem,” Abrams read from his cable via videoconference testimony to a federal court in Buenos Aires. But this didn't deter the State Department at the time from granting Argentina certification indicating that the country's human rights record was improving.

Alan Iud, a lawyer representing The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who claim that as many as 500 children were stolen, said that Abrams' testimony “exceeded our expectations.” However, Abrams' and the Reagan Administration's relationship with the military junta was not adversarial, something that has been lost in the story, if not the trial. In fact, in 1978, even before being elected president, Ronald Reagan wrote a column in The Miami News attacking President Jimmy Carter's criticisms of Argentina's record of human rights abuses. Reagan countered that the military junta “set out to restore order” and that too much was being made over the jailing of “a few innocents.” However, human rights organizations estimate that tens of thousands of people were tortured, killed and disappeared during Argentina's “dirty war.” One of Reagan's first acts as president was to overturn military aid restrictions put in place by Carter as a result of the regime's horrendous human rights record. The administration even hosted Argentine generals “at an elegant state dinner.” Furthermore, Reagan paid members of Argentina's notorious death squads to travel to Honduras to train the Contras, as well as Honduran paramilitaries, such as the infamous death squad Battalion 3-16, as the Baltimore Sun revealed in a 1995 exposé.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3440-elliot-abrams-dark-history-in-latin-america-and-the-struggle-for-justice

[Confusious]

1. That quote right there

that too much was being made over the jailing of “a few innocents.”

Jefferson once said "I would rather 100 guilty men go free then an innocent spend one moment in jail."

I think he would have been horrified at st. ronnie.

[Dawson Leery]

2. Ronnie Reagan, always a sack of horse s**t, always.