Infamous Pinochet-era agent dies

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

One of the most notorious figures from the regime of former military ruler of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, has died in prison, officials have said.
Osvaldo Romo, who was serving 15 years in jail for killing three dissidents during Gen Pinochet's rule, died of heart and respiratory problems.

Known as "El Guaton" ("The Fat One"), Romo also faced pending trials for human rights abuses from 1973 to 1990.


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6271462.stm

---

Good. Just a shame he didn't last until 9/11 - the original one. Might have been more appropriate for him to have died on that anniversary date. Aggregate deaths exceeded the other 9/11.
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/USA-Chile.htm

[PghTiny]

1. Good riddance to bad rubbish

Betcha some freepers are bawling over this

[Hand]

8. Freepers are too ignorant.

However, you can bet that Margaret Thatcher is just busting a gut over this. She just loved her some Pinochet. :grr: :puke:

[rpannier]

2. Take his body and toss it in the Pacific Ocean

It's a fitting tribute to the f**ker!

[Judi Lynn]

3. He was one hideous man. There's a documentary out about Allende,

and there's a segment in it in which Osvaldo Romo Mena discusses with 100% delight the similarity the victim's rectum has as he/she is being strangled or drowned or something (I have almost a blockout due to its excessive ugliness) to someone's mouth as he/she drowns. He is completely absorbed. If you see this you will surely feel you are looking at something which is no longer human.

Don't have more time available now, but I intend to add some links to this thread commenting on this monstrous person, and the roll he played in the hell on earth Richard Nixon brought to Chile when he arranged the destruction of Salvador Allende.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Pinochet-era officer dies in Chile

This story is from our news.com.au network Source: Reuters
Pinochet-era officer dies in Chile
• From correspondents in Santiago
• July 05, 2007

ONE of the most notorious figures from the Chilean dictatorship of late Gen. Augusto Pinochet died yesterday having served five years in prison for human rights abuses.
Osvaldo Romo, known as “El Guaton” (The fat one) and accused by his victims of being a brutal torturer, died of heart failure in a prison hospital in the capital Santiago at 4:45am (18:45AEST), the hospital said.

He was 69.
Romo was an officer in the DINA, the intelligence service set up by Pinochet after he seized power in a military coup in 1973.
Nearly 3200 people died in political violence during the subsequent 17-year dictatorship, many at the hands of the DINA.

A further 28,000 were tortured and thousands more went into exile abroad.
Romo worked at Santiago's Villa Grimaldi, the most notorious of the DINA's detention centres.

Survivors of Villa Grimaldi described him as a sadistic torturer.
Michelle Bachelet, Chile's current President, was briefly detained at Villa Grimaldi in the 1970s.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22020930-1702,00.html




Villa Grimaldi
Short history of Villa Grimaldi, in Pinochet’s grasp:

From 1892, the land belonged to the family of Jose Arrieta. The cultural tradition was continued with meetings of music and literature that lasted until 1940, when the land was sold to Emilio Vasallo, who turned the house into a restaurant. Vasallo was instrumental in encouraging the tradition of it being a meeting place for intellectuals and artists. The restaurant's grounds had many beautiful plants, statues, fountains and mosaics to make it appear like an Italian villa, hence the name Villa Grimaldi.
In September 1973, the vista was transformed by the arrival of military vehicles and army personnel. The Commando of Army Telecommunications was situated a little distance from the villa. Here, Pinochet had his quarters, from where he directed the bloody crushing of Chilean democracy from a safe, secure and pleasant site.
At the end of 1973, Vasallo was forced to handover the property to DINA, or his daughter would be tortured. From December 1 that year, Villa Grimaldi was the secret centre of detention and torture. The secret police thought it was clever to convert this place, once the centre of intellectual and artistic life, into the place where Chile's best, bravest and most committed intellectuals were destroyed.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2003/547/29894
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Torturers, Collaborators and Accomplices
This is a list of some of the members of the Chilean Army, Air Force, Navy and the Secret Police (DINA and CNI) indicted for human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990). Many of them continue to walk freely in Chile and some even occupy important places within many Chilean institutions. Only a handful have been tried and given prison sentences.
Abarzua, Gustavo
Retired General, was Director of the C.N.I. (Central Nacional de Inteligencia - the Chilean secret police) and later head of the DINE (Army secret police), a position he kept until he retired. He was one of the men Pinochet trusted and occupied two of the highest positions in the repression. On December 28th he was arrested for his participation in the secret financial scheme known as “La Cutufa”

Acevedo, Luis
Actively participated in the so-called “Operacion Albania” that took place between the 15th and 16th of June 1987, when twelve people belonging to the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front were murdered in separate locations in Santiago.

Acevedo, Hugo
This agent, who worked in the general quarters of the DINA along with Alejandro Burgos de Beer, was personal secretary to Manuel Contreras, the director of the repressive organization.

Acuña, Victor
A CNI agent, who during University protests, was seen firing against students who were demanding the democratization of the country. In November 1984 he was captured by students who held him up to a “Popular Court” (“Juicio popular”). He admitted to being an agent of the CNI, named his superiors and admitted to his participation in the torture of political prisoners.

Acuña, Cesar
This CNI member participated in Operation Albania between the 15th and 16th of June 1987 during the Corpus Christi holiday, where twelve people belonging to the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front were murdered in various locations in Santiago.

Acuña, Mario
This Military Prosecutor ordered the kidnapping and execution of Isiaias Higueras, a prisoner, on January 11, 1974. Isaias Higueras was imprisoned in the Pisagua prison camp when, without a court order, he was taken out of the camp and shot. Later in July 1989 his body was exhumed from the local cemetery and relocated in an unknown location.

Aguilera, Juan
This investigative detective was indicted by the Fourth Criminal Court of San Miguel for the arrest and unlawful application of physical force and serious injuries against the political prisoner Roberto Javier Munoz Munos.

Aldoney, Guillermo
A navy Captain and Joint Chief of Staff of the First Naval Zone. Along with the ships Lebu and Maipo, the naval ship Esmeralda was used as a place of detention and torture of political prisoners after the military coup of 1973, as was noted in the Rettig Report and other reports from the OEA (Organization of American States), Amnesty International, and the United States Senate.


Cont’d
http://www.memoriaviva.com/English/criminals_list.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Over 1200 centre of detention and torture have been identified so far, some of them are listed here:
Cont’d
http://www.memoriaviva.com/English/centros_detencion_lista.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ‘Dolphins’ that Exterminated the Communist Party
From the newspaper ‘La Nacion’
Sunday, 1st April 2007
Judge Víctor Montiglio’s investigation uncovered the existence of an elite cell of La Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA: National Intelligence Directorate: the Chilean Secret Police), known as ‘Delfín’ (Dolphin) that was created especially by Manuel Contreras and Pinochet to exterminate the leaders of the Communist Party (PC). Fifty accused members described to the judge the most harrowing part of the dictatorship:
By Jorge Escalante and Javier Rebolledo
The 15 year old boy received the Mack-10 submachine gun and the briefcase from the hands of Colonel Manuel Contreras, and then nodded towards him - the chief operative of the DINA. They had taught him that this was what he should do every time ‘el Mamo’ arrived in his house in Pocuro with Antonio Varas, in the Providencia suburb of Santiago.
“Look you idiot, you gotta be more alert when the boss comes and gives you your things. And from now on you bow to him, because here this shit is serious. And it’s ‘Colonel’, none of this ‘Señor Contreras’. This aint no social club, this shit is the DINA”, had shouted subcommander Olmedo, one of Contreras’ bodyguards, while he grabbed the boy’s hair and shoved a pistol against his forehead.
After that episode, “el Mamo” went away to relax and waited for the boy to serve dinner. The kid had arrived at the house one day in 1974, with a recommendation from General Galvarino Mandujano, who had mentioned him to María Teresa Valdebenito, Contreras’ wife.
After that, things happened quickly. After a brief military preparation, the boy joined DINA’s Lautaro Brigade, first in a department on the 19th floor of Tower 5 in the San Borja complex, in the centre of Santiago, and then the Simón Bolívar 8630 jail, in La Reina.
The original purpose of the brigade was to provide protection to Contreras and his family, but from 1976, this objective deviated towards killing communists.
An eager, curious boy, he wanted to get involved in everything. He witnessed tortures, heard the screams of pain, saw the blood spill from members of the PC. Once, he even had to hold his breath so that he didn’t shout when his bosses used a blowtorch to erase the fingerprints and a scar from the body of a militant communist.
Thirty years later, wracked by his conscience, he decided to reveal what he had witnessed. Last January he faced the Brigada de Asuntos Especiales y Derechos Humanos (BAEDH: Taskforce on Special Issues and Human Rights) of the Investigative Police, and then he spoke with Judge Víctor Montiglio, who led the investigation into the abduction and disappearance of the first clandestine directorate of the PC in May 1976, known as ‘calle Conferencia’ (Conference Street).
Cont’d
http://www.memoriaviva.com/English/the_workings_of_the_secret_police.htm

One of Romo’s victims, Diana Frida Aron Svigilisky.
http://www.ecomemoria.com/app/ViewTree.aspx?IDACT=1&IDTREE=2&IDLANG=0

~snip~
HEADLINE: ROMO PROHIBITED FROM ACCESS TO PRESS
KEYWORD: HUMAN RIGHTS; JUSTICE; MEDIA
SOURCE: LA NACION
SOURCE: LA EPOCA
TEXT: The courts will probably not authorize any more press
interviews with former DINA agent Osvaldo Romo, after his recent
statements to the Hispanic channel Univision, said Justice Minister
Soledad Alvear.
"After hearing this man's incredible statements on television, I
think it is frankly dangerous that he continue giving interviews to
the press," said Minister Alvear. "He advocated violence on TV, and I
think this hurts the country. I think it is improbable that the judges
handling his cases will authorize another interview."
It was the director of the national prison system who
authorized the television interview with the former DINA agent,
sidestepping the required judicial authorization, she added.
Osvaldo Romo, currently imprisoned in the Penitentiary
hospital, is being tried for his involvement in eleven human rights
cases. In the Univision interview, the ex-DINA agent said he
"wouldn't have left anyone alive" and said that "torture was good"
but no one can accuse him of offending anyone.
According to Nancy Guzman, Univision correspondent in Chile,
Romo agreed to the interview after his lawyer approved it. Guzman
stated that some parts of the interview were cut in Univision's Miami
studios, because Romo's "crude" descriptions of the conditions in
which he left his victims may have offended viewers.More:
http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/news/chip/h95/chip.19950524.html

[Judi Lynn]

5. More information on the organization for whom Romo worked:

~snip~
A) Locations of the DINA:
1. Tejas Verdes. 2. Cuatro Alamos. Here there was no access for persons other
than the DINA. It had a series of small and incommunicated cells. 3. Londres n§ 38,
located in the
center of Santiago.: 4. José Domingo Cañas, in Santiago: 5. Villa Grimaldi, in
Santiago, was the most important detention and torture Center of the DINA, which had
specially designed artefacts for the torture of detainees. In this detention Center there
was an area known as the Tower in whose interior had been built about ten
compartments of 70x70 centimeters and two meters high, with a low door which they
had to enter on their knees. In this Tower there was a torture room. The majority of the
detainees who went there were not seen again; other areas were the "Chile Houses",
constructions of wooden planks where the person had to remain on foot. The "Corvi
Houses" were small wooden boxes built into a larger room in which the person remained
upright for several days.
The torture sessions were practiced by specialist agents, and other officers
carried out the interrogations, although they sometimes also participated in the torture.
The most commonly used form of torture was the "parrilla" (grill) which consisted
of a metal table on which the victim was laid naked and tied by his extremities and then
electric charges were applied to lips , genitals, wounds or metal protheses; two people,
relatives or friends, were placed in metal boxes, one on top of the other so that when the
person above was tortured, the other felt the psychological impact; on other occasions
the victim was hung by the wrists and/or the knees to a bar and during the lengthy period
he remained like that, electric currents were applied to him, cutting wounds were inflicted
or he was beaten; at other times the person s head was immersed in dirty water or other
liquids; or they used the "submarino seco" method, i.e., placing a bag over the head until
close to suffocation; drugs were also used, and boiling water was thrown over various
detainees as punishment and as a foretaste of the death which they would later suffer. 6.
La Discotheque or La Venda Sexy; 7. Implacante, 8. Cuartel Venecia, all in
293
Santiago; 9. Cuartel General in C/. Belgrano n§ 11; and Rinconada Maipú, both in the
proximity of Santiago; 11. Clinics of the DINA; 12. Colonia Dignidad, owner of the
property or "El Lavadero" where agents of the DINA practised torture and made
several detainees disappear; 13. La Casa del Parral in the town of the same name, 14.
Military Hospital and other localities of the Armed Forces and forces of Order and
Security.
B) Locations of the SIFA and of the Joint Command:
Amongst others, these stand out:
1. Air War Academy (AGA) between end of l973 and end of l974. The average of
persons held in detention during l974 was between 70 and 80. Torture was practiced on
the
second floor or in the chapel, and consisted of the introduction of splinters or pointed
objects under the nails, hanging by "pau de arara", heads hooded, and all types of
beatings. Among the personas who underwent this treatment were General Bachelet and
José Luis Baeza Cruces, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.; 2.
Casa de Apoquindo, in Santiago; 3. Hangar in Cerrillos; 4. Nido 20; 5. Nido 18; 6.
Remo Cero: Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment in Colina; 7. La firma.
III/ Between August 1977 and 1990, the Central Nacional de Informaciones
(CNI), the DICOMCAR and COVEMA systematically practised torture on detainees on
a more selective basis than the DINA. The main methods continued to be: electricity
applied to sensitive parts of the body, immersion of head in water, almost to the point of
asphyxiation, and beatings. Sometimes the torture led to the death of the victim.
SIXTEEN: Torture was applied to more than 500,000 people, and because the
list would be endless, in the following pages a series of cases are enumerated, especially
significant as to the tortures inflicted, within what was a generally applied system,
established, approved and encouraged by the members of the Governing Junta, presided
over by Augusto Pinochet and carried out by his subordinates.
1. - On 11 September 1973 Marcos Roberto Roitman Rosenman was arrested
and taken to the Chile Stadium. There, along with other detainees carried on the same
bus, he was forced to get out and then to jump up and down continuously under the threat
of whipping if he stopped, which consisted of lashing the victim s feet with barbed wire.
This punishment was inflicted afterwards. During all this time the detainees lived in a
state of intense fear; they were told they were there because they were Marxists and
communists, they were not citizens nor people and that at any time the new military law
could be applied and they could be shot with no reason given.
Various citizens bled to death in the stadium as a result of gunshot wounds
without receiving any medical help. Likewise a number of detainees jumped from the
294
second floor of the stadium suffering skull fractures. During the first few days they were
interrogated to establish exactly where they had been arrested and then sent to different
locations according to the answers, Thus the people detained in the State Technical
University were then moved to the National Stadium. On arrival they were given their
first meal in four days, consisting of bread and a cup of coffee and then separated into
various groups in the interior of the building, with other citizens of differing ages, sex,
and social positions. Marcos Alberto Roitman was interrogated for the first time on 18
September and as soon as he gave his age and said he was a student at the Technical
University he received a punch in the face of such force that he was knocked to the
ground. This victim along with the rest, was subjected to various sessions of
interrogation, when he was given the names of people and on saying he did not know
them was beaten repeatedly with a pick handle and iron bars. There was a general
feeling of terror and the constant sound of screaming from the tortured detainees led to
cases of some victims losing their mind, faced with the incomprehensible and staggering
situation they found themselves in, given that they did not know why they had been
arrested.
The Commandant of the place, who says he is obeying orders of the Chief of the
Armed Forces, - Augusto Pinochet Ugarte - again told the detainees that they are not
persons, they have no rights nor protection under the Constitution. In the meantime the
soldiers subjected
them to constant psychological torture, threatening to shoot them with a machine gun
known as Hitler s Electric Saw because one burst would cut a person in two.
Torture was implemented in a systematic and generalised fashion under the
express orders of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and the rest of the military leaders and was
developed through the most varied techniques. That this is so is verified by an analysis
of the meeting that took place in the second half of 1974 between Augusto Pincohet, the
Bishop of the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Chile, Helmut Erich Walter Frenz, and the
Catholic Bishop, Fernando Ariztia, both of them in their capacity as Joint-Presidents of
the Pro-Peace Committee (Comité Pro Paz), during which they delivered an exhaustive
dossier on cases of systematic torture carried out by members of the DINA on
detainees. Sr. Pinochet, asked the clerics, causing them some perplexity, if when they
spoke of physical harassment - an expression that they had used earlier - they were
referring to torture, to which they answered yes; at this point, Augusto Pinochet, after
leafing through the document and slowly studying it said: You are priests and enjoy the
luxury of being merciful. I am a soldier and President of the whole Chilean Nation,
whose people have been attacked by the bacillus of communism and they must be
eradicated, the communists and marxists, they must be tortured because otherwise they
will not sing".
During this meeting Bishop Ariztia asked what had happened to Father Antonio
Llidó, a priest of Spanish nationality who had disappeared. Pinochet Ugarte replied in a
295
harsh tone "He is not a priest, he is a communist or marzist", equating this concept with
the need for execution or extermination in that they are not considered as human beings
and, therefore, they can be tortured and eliminated.
Following this line of thought, it is a question of wiping out any religious
discrepancy that may be united to, or close to, the above cathegorisation (Marxism,
socialism) and which differs from the particular concept of religion that the members of
the Governing Junta hold.
Thus the group "Christians for Socialism", - whose members were principally
priests and catholic citizens who thought that Socialism is nearer to the Scriptures than
Capitalism - was systematically persecuted, forcing the members who were not captured
to go into hiding or to flee the country, as happened both with its leaders, Gonz lez
Arroyo, Mariano Puga, and with those who simply members, numbering almost one
hundred, who with the help of the bishops and the ambassadors managed to escape.
2.- Antonio Llidó Mengual was arrested during the last days of September 1974
and confined in the Detention Centre in Calle José Domingo Cañas, installations
belonging to the DINA.
He was subjected to torture, including the application of electric current to his
genital organs and repeated physical beatings of his whole body, leaving him with various
fractured ribs. He was also the victim of sado-sexual aggression tortures because he was
a priest. During the period he was the victim of tortures he received no medical
assistance whatsoever. They forced him to sing songs which the priest did to try and
comfort the other prisoners. The degradation to which he was subjected reached the limit
when he was forced to lie on the ground behind another detainee, a girl called "LUMI
VIDELA MOYA" and the soldiers said "perhaps you will feel better that way because
all you priests are queers". At all times the bearing of the priest was courageous and he
comforted the rest of the prisoners, sharing with them the food the guards gave him to
live on, scraps of bread and fruit peels.

On 12 October 1974 or thereabouts, Father Llidó was taken to the Cuatro
Alamos Detention Centre, also run by the DINA, and confined with other people, for
example HERMAN EUGENIO SCHWEMBER FERN NDEZ in what was known as
"Room 13" in that concentration camp. On or about 26 October 1974 Father Llidó was
taken aside with a group of 12 or so other prisoners, among them JUAN ALFREDO
GAJARDO WOLFF, the brothers ANDRONICUS ANTEQUERA and ARIEL
SALINAS, and all of them were made to disappear.
Father Llidó, was born in Valencia (Spain) and was working in the parish of
Quillota in the Valparaiso Diocesis. He had arrived in Chile as a priest forming part of a
296
pastoral mission, and became involved in various civic activities with his parishioners,
and that is the reason he was tortured and then disappeared at the hands of members of
the DINA, who were acting on the orders of their superiors, whose supreme commander
in the hierarchical structure is Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.
3. Marta Lidia Ugarte Rom n, member of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Chile was arrested by DINA agents on 9 August 1974 and taken to
Villa Grimaldi. Nothing was known of her until her corpse was discovered in September
1976, with clear signs of having undergone severe torture before being killed.
According to eye witnesses, she was suspended in a pit from a pole, had her
finger nails and toe nails pulled out, and had her hair burned. Likewise according to the
autopsy reports her body had been thrown from a considerable height, judging from the
disintegration of various parts of her body.
4.- José Marcelino González Malpu, arrested with the rest of his family on 29
October 1976, his brother has not been seen since. He was subjected to torture,
comprising application of electric current to his genitals, shoulders and ankles. He had
water thrown over him beforehand to make the pain more intense. His ears were beaten,
they placed his mother, naked, in front of him and went through the motions of shooting
her.
5.- Pedro Hugo Arellano Carvajal was arrested together with his father following
the bombing of the building that housed the radio station which was identified as
belonging to the Socialist Party.
From the time they were detained they were subjected to multiple tortures; he
was tied to a metal bed and his hands were forced against an electrified metal plate,
with the victim being thrown back across the room from the shock. Apart from the
electrical torture he was subjected to beatings in 10 different locations and finally in
prison. Apart from those blows, he was ill-treatted in ten different places and finally in
the prison. Apart from the electric current electric wires were attached to his chest, his
penis and his toes. In another place he was tied to a tree and whipped. He was pushed
along a corridor and beaten all the way. He was put on board a helicopter, and pushed
out with ropes tied to his trousers, and flown through thorns. On landing, he was
thrown onto the tarmac lying face down with his hands tied. In the same centre they tied
him to a rope and lowered him into a water well and left him until he was practically
drowned, then pulled him out, asked various questions and since he didn't answer
lowered him back into the well. They also played Russian roulette with him which
consisted of blindfolding him, and the soldiers would place a pistol or machine gun
against his head and simulate shooting him. On occasions they shot a gun right next to
his head and he could feel the explosion of air. In Belloto they placed an apple on his
head and started to shoot near it. Previously the base chaplain had asked them if they
wanted to commend their souls to God, lending himself to the torturers games. In the
naval hospital in Ormue under the orders of Pedro Arancibia he is forced to take all his
clothes off as were the Rodríguez family who had been arrested with their sons. They
forced the sons to lie on the ground and the father to lie on top of them and make sexual
movements in such a way that the father penetrated the elder son and the other son
penetrated his young brother. Pedro Arellano was forced to lie on top of one of the
children and obliged to do the same as the father had done.
The marines who were directing these sessions stood over the victims, with a bayonet
pressed against the nape of their necks, threatening to blow their heads open if they did
not penetrate the boys. Afterwards they were all marched down a corridor completely
naked, and beaten continuously. One of the marines opened up the anus of one of the
boys with a bayonet and cut him. Pedro Arellano, apart from the Rodríguez family,
witnessed beatings and other physical abuse performed on D. Celestino Saenz del Río, a
Spanish citizen and member of the Socialist Party. He also saw approximately 500
people being tortured. The tortures were performed by the military who would throw
stones at the heads of the older victims for half an hour and make them run along on
their knees across the rocks that were on the Belloto runway.
(snip/...)

More:
http://www.elclarin.cl/fpa/pdf/p_101298_en.pdf

Photos of Villa Grimaldi:
http://home.comcast.net/~magisterludimac2/villa/villa.html

[dipsydoodle]

6. Ta for those. Henry has much to answer to as well.

Old news but still valid :

AR) NEW YORK -- The secret government files on Chile, which the Clinton Administration says will be opened to the Spanish prosecutor of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, will prove a major embarrassment for Henry Kissinger, the American most tied to the U.S.-assisted plot to the 1973 overthrow the elected government of President Salvador.
They will show how, in the months and years following the 1973 coup, Kissinger covered up U.S. information about atrocities in Chile and sought to persuade Pinochet that the U.S. government did not consider his behavior a major problem.

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9903a/kissingerchile.html

more here too : http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Chile_TOHK.html

This link provides chapter and verse on the run to Pinochet taking over :
http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/murder40.htm

I recall readng that Pinochet was not in fact the first choice. "They" murdered the first choice becuase he wouldn't play ball - he didn't agree with Allende's policies but acknowledged he had been democratically elected by the people. The son of that guy was at the trial in Paris which Kissinger refused to attend despite a summons delivered to his hotel.

[Judi Lynn]

10. This sounds SO FAMILIAR! Your third link is really, REALLY important.

(I only read the first two, earlier. Ran out of time before I reached the third one.)

Hope more people see this. It's so damned creepy, seeing how Nixon's Pentagon arranged to pull the wool over the eyes of the Chilean military, in order to get their cooperation in the coup Nixon wanted:

~snip~
The Pentagon envoys' line of reasoning was this: U.S. intelligence reports show that Peru is preparing for war with Chile in order to reclaim provinces lost in the nineteenth century. Reliable sources have informed us that the Peruvian generals are arming themselves with heavy tanks and will buy weapons in the Soviet Union. (Naturally, the Pentagon envoys did not inform the Chilean generals that they had planned to stop selling arms to Peru so that the Peruvian government would be forced to turn to the Soviet Union for replacements. This would provide the United States with a "strategic excuse" to begin a campaign against Peru, as soon as it had solved the Chilean problem.)
(snip)

The "Pentagon report" was a drug to many generals, who used it as the patriotic "justification" to join the plot against Allende. Very few of the generals questioned the reliability of this "Pentagon report." Among those few was General Carlos Prats Gonzalez, the Army's commander in chief. An expression he once used to characterize it was "grotesque."
(snip)

If anyone wonders if this sounds like what happened after _Bush cut off sale of the airplanes Hugo Chavez had bought from the U.S., and the parts to REPAIR them, he/she just might be right! We HAVE been there before, in South America, with a leftist leader, and a bloodthirsty, lunatic Republican American pResident. Jesus H. Christ!

[dipsydoodle]

7. And there's more...................

I found the name of the General they murdered : Gen. René Schneider :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Schneider
Scroll down to Legal Suits :
On September 10, 2001, General Schneider's family filed a suit against former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, accusing him of collaborating with Viaux in arranging for Schneider's murder.

The family were at the trial in Paris when Kissinger wouldn't show.

More here too : http://www.icai-online.org/56282,46136.html

[Judi Lynn]

9. INFAMOUS EX-DINA AGENT OSVALDO ROMO DIES IN JAIL

INFAMOUS EX-DINA AGENT OSVALDO ROMO DIES IN JAIL

(July 5, 2007) One of the most notorious Pinochet-era secret police (DINA) agents, Osvaldo Romo Mena, died in jail Wednesday morning. He was serving time for two human rights violations, although he was linked to the disappearance of more than 80 people during the military dictatorship.

“Savage” and “cruel” are the words that can best be used to describe Romo. A proponent of torture, Romo inflicted pain on hundreds of political prisoners between 1973 and 1975, some of the bloodiest days of Chile’s military dictatorship. He is connected to the torture, death, and eventual dumping of Lumi Videla’s body at the Italian embassy. Additionally, Judge Alejandro Solis implicated Romo in the 1974 disappearance of former MIR militant Jacqueline Binfa. (ST, May 15)

Jacqueline Binfa was detained on August 27, 1974 by DINA agents and bounced around clandestine detention facilities including the Cuatro Alamos and Jose Domingo Cañas centers. She was eventually tortured and “disappeared.” At the time of her detention, Binfa was 28 years old and single, and studied social work at the Universidad de Chile. Her mother, Julia Contreras, died in 1982 without ever knowing her daughter’s fate (ST, May 15).

With help from the DINA, Romo left Chile for Brazil in 1975. Brazilian authorities extradited him back to Chile in 1992 in connection with the disappearance of Alfonso Chanfreau. He was then incarcerated in the Santiago Penitentiary.

Even after his apprehension, Romo staunchly defended his actions. In a 1995 interview with a Miami television station, Romo was asked, in retrospect, if he would have repeated his actions with the DINA. He responded coldly, “I would have done the same thing, or perhaps even worse. I would not let one of those bastards live. I would have sent everyone to jail! This was one of the DINA’s most crucial errors, and I tried to convince my general of something until the very last minute: do not allow these people to live.”

More:
http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=14157&topic_id=15

Another of his many victims, one fortunate enough to have survived, years later:



ALEJANDRA Holzapfel Picarte

[Judi Lynn]

11. CHILE: OSVALDO ROMO HONORED DURING “SECRET” FUNERAL

CHILE: OSVALDO ROMO HONORED DURING “SECRET” FUNERAL

(July 9, 2007) Osvaldo Romo Mena, one of the best know Pinochet-era torturers, was given a “secret” funeral Thursday night in Santiago’s Recoleta Cemetery, after Chile’s media reported his official burial earlier in the day had not been attended by a single relative or friend.

The secret burial was arranged by two of Romo’s Brazilian grandchildren.

After the official Thursday morning burial in Recoleta Cemetery, a group approached cemetery director Tulio Guevara, asking to have Romo’s body moved to another site and to allow a small ceremony in his memory.

The group spoke only in Portuguese and two claimed to be Romo’s grandchildren.

More:
http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=14178&topic_id=15