Italy: Judge issues 140 arrest warrants in "Plan Condor" case. Bush NOT YET indicted.

[L. Coyote]

Incredible positive news for human rights and for victim families,
immensely bad news for all Americans involved in the murders.

So far, CIA Director George H. W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and other U.S. nationals
have eluded arrest warrants. That may change as the legal process moves forward.
Already, both former Argentine and Uruguayan leaders are among those indicted.

For the recent compilation thread on Plan Condor inquiry issues, see:
George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

=============
Italy judge issues warrants in "Plan Condor" case
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071224/ts_nm/argentina_italy_condor_dc

ROME (Reuters) Dec. 24, 2007 - An Italian judge on Monday issued arrest warrants for 140 Latin Americans suspected of involvement in a coordinated persecution of leftists and dissidents by Latin America's military rulers in the 1970s, Italian news agencies said.

Almost all of those on the list are living in Latin America and a number are already in custody there as part of investigations into the conspiracy known as "Plan Condor."

One man, Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli, a former member of the Uruguayan secret services, was arrested in southern Italy, the Ansa and Agi news agencies reported.

The warrants involve Argentines, Bolivians, Brazilians, Chileans, Paraguayans and Peruvians.

They are suspected of complicity in the deaths of 25 Italian citizens killed in Latin American by military regimes in the 1970s, the news agencies reported.

Under Italian law, Italian magistrates can investigate the killings of Italian citizens overseas.

[L. Coyote]

1. Former Uruguayan dictator detained in disappearance of dissidents

Former Uruguayan dictator detained in disappearance of dissidents
2007-12-17 - MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) - http://www.pr-inside.com/former-uruguayan-dictator-detained-in-r352248.htm


Uruguay's last military dictator, Gregorio Alvarez, was charged Monday with the forced disappearance of political prisoners and sent to a military prison to await prosecution.
Alvarez, an 82-year-old retired army general, led Uruguay from 1982 until 1985, shortly before the restoration of Uruguayan democracy.
Judge Luis Charles charged Alvarez in connection with
the disappearance of some 40 Uruguayan political prisoners who were seized by military rulers in neighboring Argentina and then were transferred secretly to Uruguay between 1977 and 1978, prosecutor Mirtha Guianze said.
Charles had no comment on Monday's detention, but it was confirmed by the former leader's wife.
Guianze has argued that Alvarez was in a position to know about the illegal crackdown on dissidents, both as former army commander in chief and later, de facto president.
Alvarez said in earlier court appearance that he knew nothing of illegal abductions and forced disappearances. But courts rejected his efforts to challenge the constitutionality of the investigation.
Prosecutors say Uruguayan political prisoners were brought from Argentina in a secret airlift as part of «Plan Condor,» in which South America's right-wing military regimes cooperated to crush leftist dissent.
The military ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985. Argentina was under military dictatorship from 1976 until 1983.
Some 150 Uruguayan activists, believed to have been seized by governments of the era, remain missing. Argentines are still seeking information about nearly 13,000 officially listed as dead or missing from the period of military rule.

...........

[L. Coyote]

3. Uruguayan ex-dictator arrested

Uruguayan ex-dictator arrested
Reuters - Dec 17, 2007 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121701219.html


MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - A former Uruguayan dictator was arrested on Monday and charged with secretly transferring political prisoners who later disappeared and are presumed dead, a prosecutor said.

Gregorio Alvarez, a former army general, led Uruguay from 1981 until 1985, when the country returned to democracy after 12 years of military rule.

...........

Uruguay's military dictatorship has faced renewed scrutiny under President Tabare Vazquez, who took office in March 2005 as the country's first leftist leader.

He has led an unprecedented government effort to determine the fate of the victims of the military's campaign to stamp out the Tupamaro guerrilla movement and other suspected dissidents.

Human rights investigators also have been emboldened by a Vazquez decision excluding several prominent cases involving alleged rights abuses beyond Uruguay's borders from amnesty laws.

In November 2006, former President Juan Bordaberry, the first military leader under the dictatorship, and one of his top aides were arrested pending a trial for their role in four 1976 murders of political opponents in Buenos Aires.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Here's a portion of the BBC timeline on Uruguay which relates to this period:

Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 November 2007, 15:47 GMT
Timeline: Uruguay

~snip~
1973 - Armed forces seize power and promise to encourage foreign investment, but usher in a period of extreme repression during which Uruguay becomes known as "the torture chamber of Latin America" and accumulates the largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world.

1984 - Violent protests against repression and deteriorating economic conditions.

1985 - Army and political leaders agree on return to constitutional government and the release of political prisoners; law grants amnesty to members of the armed forces accused of human rights violations during years of dictatorship; Julio Maria Sanguinetti becomes president.

1989 - Referendum endorses amnesty for human rights abusers; Lacalle Herrera elected president.

1994 - Julio Maria Sanguinetti elected president.

1999 - Jorge Batlle elected president.

2000 - Commission begins investigating the fate of 160 people who disappeared during the years of military dictatorship.

2002 April - Uruguay breaks diplomatic ties with Cuba, after Cuba accuses it of being a US lackey for sponsoring a UN resolution which calls on Havana to implement human rights reforms.
(snip)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1229362.stm

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

This dictator, Gregorio Alvarez, would have been connecting with Ronald Reagan as his buddy in the White House. You recall Ronald Reagan was BIG on supporting barbaric Latin American violent oppression of leftists, union workers, villagers, local Catholic liberation theology priests and their households, suspected could be leftists, etc.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Comments on Uruguay by prominant Uruguayan dissident:

(1) The Uruguayan military institutes a totalitarian regime far beyond anything in Eastern Europe.

(2) This is done with full US support, including torture-training from the SOA.

The gory details �

During the 1960s, Uruguay is in the midst of a long-running economic decline under the watch of US corporations and a US-supported anti-democratic regime, with widespread poverty, labor strikes, student demonstrations, and militant street violence, and the largely nonviolent Tupamoros, "perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world had ever seen," with widespread public support and secret admirers in key positions in the government, banks, universities, professions, military, and police.

"The Tupamoros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder." � New York Times, 8/1/70

The US-armed and US-trained military crush the Tupamoros in 1972, institute 11 years of repressive dictatorship, with "the largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world , � each one of them was tortured." � The Guardian (London) 10/19/84, Human Rights Quarterly, 5/82.

In the most extreme case, nine top Tupamoro leaders, following months of the most brutal physical torture, are kept in complete solitary confinement for over a decade. "In over eleven and a half years, I didn�t see the sun for more than eight hours altogether. I forgot colors�there were no colors." � Mauricio Rosencof, who spends his confinement at the bottom of a well.
(snip)

"People were in prison so that prices could be free."

� dissident Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/poli/soa/uruguay.htm

(Anyone could benefit from reading this excellent writer. I've just been given his book Open Veins of Latin America as a gift. Can't wait to read it.)

[L. Coyote]

2. Italy to arrest former Latin American dictators

Italy to arrest former Latin American dictators
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, among others, is facing an arrest warrant issued by Italian judicial officials. They are wanted for murder, abduction, and other crimes the 'Dirty War' of the 1970s and 80s.
Dec 25, 2007 - Spero News - http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=13250


Judicial officials in Italy issued 140 arrest orders for persons involved in the so-called "Plan Condor", which involved the detention, torture, and summary execution of South American dissidents during the 1970s and 80s. Among those on the list are former Argentine leaders, General Jorge Rafael Videla and Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, as well as General Juan Maria Bordaberry of Uruguay.

Some of those on the warrants have already died, such as former Chilean dictator and army chief Augusto Pinochet. But former uruguayan military intelligence chief Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli - now 60 years old - was arrested in the town of Salerno in southern Italy where he has lived for a number of years. .....

Others on the list include: Eduardo Albano Harguindeguy, Cristino Nicolaides, Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, Antonio Domingo Bussi, Santiago Omar Riveros and Eduardo Daniel De Lio. Bussi was one of the more notable officers involved in Argentina's "Dirty War" of the 1970s. Accused of murder, abduction, and corruption he would eventually benefit from an amnesty promulgated under President Raul Alfonsin. Former army officer Bussi, after the Dirty War, became governor of the province of Tucuman and the founder of a political party.

Italian authorities had begun their investigation of "Plan Condor" of dictators and military chieftains involved after following up requests by South Americans who had family ties to Italy .....

[L. Coyote]

4. Italy seeks Condor plot suspects = "kidnappings and multiple murders" of leftists

Italy seeks Condor plot suspects
Among those whose arrests are sought by Italian authorities is former Argentine military leader Jorge Rafael Videla in 1978
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7159666.stm



..... Under Operation Condor, six governments worked together from the 1970s to hunt down and kill left-wing opponents.

Italian authorities have been looking into the plot since the late 1990s. ..............

.....

Among the other names on the list are the former Argentine military leader Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentine former naval chief admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, and ex-Uruguayan junta leader Jorge Maria Bordaberry.

Those named face charges ranging from lesser crimes to kidnappings and multiple murders.

Under Operation Condor - thought to have been launched in 1975 and running into the 1980s - the six military governments agreed to co-operate in sending teams into other countries to track, monitor and kill their political opponents ... left-wing opponents of military regimes in the region who had fled to neighbouring countries found themselves hunted down in exile.

The still unresolved plot continues to cast a shadow over present-day governments ...

[L. Coyote]

5. Thirteen With the C.I.A. Sought by Italy in a 2003 Kidnapping in Milan.

While no links between cases are yet noted, Italian justice is seeking to arrest CIA agents for a recent kidnapping.

===============
Thirteen With the C.I.A. Sought by Italy in a Kidnapping
By STEPHEN GREY and DON VAN NATTA - June 25, 2005 - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/international/europe/25milan.html


MILAN, June 24 - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 officers and operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency on charges that they seized an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and flew him to Egypt for questioning, Italian prosecutors and investigators said Friday.

The judge, Chiara Nobili of Milan, signed the arrest warrants on Wednesday for 13 C.I.A. operatives who are suspected of seizing an imam named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to his mosque here for noon prayers on Feb. 17, 2003.

It is unclear what prompted the issuance of the warrants, but Judge Guido Salvini said in May that it was "certain" that Mr. Nasr had been seized by "people belonging to foreign intelligence networks interested in interrogating him and neutralizing him, to then hand him over to Egyptian authorities."

Mr. Nasr, who was under investigation before his disappearance for possible links to Al Qaeda, is still missing, and his family and friends say he was tortured repeatedly by Egyptian jailers.

The detailed warrants remained sealed in a Milan courthouse on Friday. But copies obtained by The New York Times show that 13 American citizens, all identified in the documents as either C.I.A. employees or as having links to the agency, are wanted to stand trial on kidnapping charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 10 years and 8 months in prison.

[L. Coyote]

6. CIA kidnapping trial = Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar = "26 US citizens"

Updated: 16 February 2007 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6368269.stm
Italy orders CIA kidnapping trial = Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar

Mr Hassan says he was tortured for four years in Egypt
An Italian judge has ordered 26 US citizens - most of them CIA agents - to stand trial over the kidnap of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.

.....

Seven Italians were also indicted, including Italy's ex-military intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari.

The case would be the first criminal trial over the secret US practice known as "extraordinary rendition". During rendition, people suspected of involvement in terror activities are taken from one country and flown to another, where many claim they are tortured......

Those indicted include the former station chief of CIA operations in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who says his opposition to the proposal to kidnap the imam was over-ruled........

Mr Pollari, the former head of the Italian secret service, SISMI, had already been removed from his job following a parliamentary inquiry into the claims.........

Mr Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was released from prison in Egypt only on Sunday ... he was repeatedly beaten and tortured during his four years of detention in Cairo..........

[L. Coyote]

9. Democracy NOW: Italy Judge Orders Arrest of 13 CIA Agents For Illegally Kidnapping

Interview of Don Van Natta, reporter with The New York Times based out of London ....

June 27, 2005
Italy Judge Orders Arrest of 13 CIA Agents For Illegally Kidnapping Cleric in Milan
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/6/27/italy_judge_orders_arrest_of_13

The agents are accused of seizing the cleric–without permission from Italian officials–and then sending him to Egypt where he was reportedly tortured. This marks the first time a foreign government has filed criminal charges against US citizens involved in counter-terrorism work abroad. .........

Real Video Stream
Real Audio Stream
MP3 Download
More...

..........the first time a foreign government has filed criminal charges against US citizens involved in counter-terrorism work abroad.

The U.S. describes the practice of extrajudicially seizing wanted individuals and then transferring them to third countries as extraordinary rendition. ....

[L. Coyote]

12. Milan imam convicted for promoting jihad = Abu Imad

Milan imam convicted for promoting jihad
20 Dec 2007 - http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL20112390.html


MILAN, Dec 20 (Reuters) - A Muslim cleric who preaches at a Milan mosque and 10 other people were convicted on Thursday of being part of a group that promotes jihad.

The Milan court sentenced Abu Imad to three years and eight months in prison under anti-terrorism statutes drafted before Sept. 11 that are weaker than those currently in place.

The group was accused of promoting jihad and recruiting potential suicide bombers.

A source at the Milan's prosecutors' office said however investigators did not believe Imad was still a threat and was allowed to remain free pending an appeal.

..... same mosque where Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, preached before Italian prosecutors believe he was kidnapped in 2003 by a CIA-led team as part of the secret U.S. rendition programme.

[L. Coyote]

15. Surviving a CIA Black Site = Dec 18, 2007 - Amy Goodman

Surviving a CIA Black Site
Dec 18, 2007 - Amy Goodman - http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071218_surviving_a_cia_black_site/

The kidnap and torture program of the Bush administration, with its secret CIA “black site” prisons and “torture taxi” flights on private jets, saw a little light of day this week. I spoke to Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in his first broadcast interview. Bashmilah was a victim of the CIA’s so-called extraordinary rendition program, in which people are grabbed from their homes, out of airports, off the streets, and are whisked away, far from the prying eyes of the U.S. Congress, the press, far from the reach of the courts, to countries where cruelty and torture are routine. ....

..........

......he was put in a diaper, had his eyes and ears covered, a bag was put over his head, and he had additional earphones put on his head to block noise. He was then flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held in solitary confinement for close to six months. He believed he was being held by Americans. “Some of the interrogators would come to me and interrogate me in the interrogation room, and they would tell me, ‘You should calm down and be comforted, because we’ll send all this information to Washington.’ And they would say that in Washington, they will determine whether my answers are truthful or not.” Although kept isolated from other prisoners, he managed to overhear some of them speculating that they were being held at Bagram Air Base. He went on to say that he was kept awake with blaring music and was held in shackles that were removed only for periodic interrogations.

While Bashmilah was being interrogated and tortured, he was also visited by “psychiatrists.” “he therapy mainly consisted of trying to look at my thoughts and trying to interpret them for me, and in addition to some tranquilizers.”

Bashmilah attempted suicide three times, staged a hunger strike that was painfully ended with a feeding tube forced down his nose, and was denied access to a lawyer, to any human-rights group, to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In effect, he was disappeared.

On May 5, 2005, he was transferred to a prison in Yemen, where he eventually gained access to his family. Amnesty International got involved. He was released in March 2006 with no charges relating to terrorism. ..................

[NNN0LHI]

7. This will go no where as long as there are US military bases all over Italy n/t

[L. Coyote]

10. These two cases put "extraordinary rendidtions" on trial as "kidnappings" Like HUGE

and, additionally, Plan Condor puts current "extraordinary renditions" into context as long-standing practice in political wars.

The question this raises, ironically, is can Italy legally kidnap from the US those indicted?
Under US law, there are rulings that might make prosecution of Italians kidnapping the indicted legal!
Those rulings supported a kidnapping by the US in Mexico.

[The Doctor.]

19. I think you meant;

"there are rulings that might make prosecution of Italians kidnapping the indicted illegal"

[shance]

13. I ask this sincerely, where exactly don't we have military bases?

Seems there are US military has bases almost everywhere.

[NNN0LHI]

14. Vietnam is the one that first comes to mind

There are a few others though. Very few.

Don

[L. Coyote]

16. Vatican City, Iran, North Korea, most of former USSR, China, India, Pakistan, lots of places

[BuyingThyme]

8. R&K

Merry Christmas!

:hi:

[L. Coyote]

11. Disentangling Torture TapeGate

Disentangling Torture TapeGate
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/dec/11/disentangling_torture_tapegate

..... recently retired Deputy Director of Operations, has been fingered as acting unilaterally, but that is not true. He did check with both the IG and the DO’s assigned Assistant General Counsel before destroying the DO’s copies of the tapes .....

..... It appears that the June 2005 decision of the Italian judge to issue arrest warrants for C.I.A. officers and contractors involved in the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in 2003 may have been the precipitating incident convincing Jose Rodriguez that Agency must destroy video tapes of terrorist interrogations. That operation was conducted with the full knowledge and approval of the Italians. If the Italians could flip on us that meant anyone could.

Let’s follow the timeline:

................

13 September 2007 – C.I.A. notifies the U.S. Attorneys in Richmond, Virginia that it had discovered the videotape of the interrogation of terrorists .........

[Judi Lynn]

17. Thanks for this thread. Unbelievably important. Will read every word A.S.A.P. K&R. n/t

[Progressive Radical]

18. Justice maybe slow ... but it will have it's day. n/t

[orleans]

20. OMG--if the judge issues a warrant for the old son of a bitch will they

please come here and get him??

will they take hs bitch wife and his fuckhead son too???

please, italy, please!

[Judi Lynn]

21. Previously: Uruguayan Ex-President Arrested (Bordaberry)

Uruguayan Ex-President Arrested
Juan Maria Bordaberry Held Along With Foreign Minister In Connection With 'Dirty War' Killings
Comments 1
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Nov. 17, 2006


(AP) Police arrested former president-turned-dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry on Friday and held the 78-year-old former leader along with his foreign minister in connection with four “Dirty War” killings in 1976.

The arrest of Bordaberry and former foreign minister Juan Blanco opened a new chapter in efforts by this small South American country to grapple with the 1973-1985 dictatorship and its legacy of disappearances, tortures and the exile of thousands of political dissidents.

“It's the first serious step taken in Uruguay in many, many years since they recovered democracy and civilian control,” Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press by telephone from Washington.

The arrests were ordered by Judge Roberto Timbal, who is probing the abductions and killings of two former lawmakers and two leftist rebels in May 1976 that shocked this small South American nation in the early throes of its long military dictatorship.

Leftist Sen. Zelmar Michelini and House leader Hector Gutierrez, two prominent lawmakers who tried to flee Uruguay's dictatorship, were seized from their homes in exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and their bullet-riddled bodies were found days later, along with those of the suspected guerrillas William Whitelaw and Rosario Barredo.

Human rights groups have long contended that the 1976 killings were the result of cooperation by South America's military dictatorships that was secretly supported by U.S. intelligence agencies.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/17/world/main2198252.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

22. Editorial: Operation Condor

Editorial: Operation Condor
26 December 2007

The idea of 140 old men from South America, the majority over 70, being hauled before the courts is not an attractive one. But if the allegations against them are indeed true, these are not very attractive men. It is alleged that these former officers and officials of six South American dictatorships in the 1970s colluded in a sinister plot to murder their political opponents. Operation Condor involved governments in Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru kidnapping left-wing activists on each other’s territory and murdering them or handing them over to their own governments to be murdered. It was a deplorably brutal operation in which anyone deemed to be in the least “left wing,” either as a political activist or a passive supporter, was considered fair game for these extrajudicial killings.

The military juntas that seized power in these countries were seen by Washington as a defense against the regional Communist threat emanating from Moscow’s outpost in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Since the Americans reasoned that democratic governments were always vulnerable to left-wing agitation, in Latin America with its long history of coups, they were happy to sponsor the seizure of power generally by military dictators. Washington thereafter turned a blind eye as these individuals set about eliminating left-wingers, whether trade unionists or intellectuals. Indeed, in the case of Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet who toppled the freely elected communist government of Salvador Allende, the US was full of praise for the dictator’s economic record. This at a time when his thugs were still hunting down the last left-wingers and by way of variation, “executing” them by throwing them from helicopters. It is only in recent years that it has become better understood how these six Latin American dictatorships liaised with each other to track down political enemies. It was always known that the CIA provided local intelligence to secret police, but it is more than likely that they also coordinated relations between the different regimes.

Now justice is finally catching up with the men who led the murderous campaigns. In Argentina, 17 former officials are under house arrest awaiting trial on a range of serious charges, many relating to Operation Condor. In Italy, some of whose citizens were victims of the dictators, has just issued warrants for the arrest of 140 suspects and actually arrested a former Uruguayan intelligence officer living in Italy.

Even after the passage of almost 40 years, it is absolutely right that these men should be made to answer the charges against them. They may be frail and gray-haired now, but when they were in their pomp, they showed no mercy to their victims and should, therefore, now expect none themselves. These proceedings are also important in demonstrating that the world will no longer tolerate human rights abuses and that, one day, those guilty of such crimes can expect to answer at the bar of justice. The only pity is that no warrants have been issued against former US officials.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=104986&d=26&m=12&y=2007

[L. Coyote]

25. "they showed no mercy to their victims and should, therefore, now expect none themselves"

and the US border should be no protection from indictment.

[L. Coyote]

26. Italy seeks justice for right-wing murder plots to "murder their left-wing opponents"

Italy seeks justice for right-wing murder plots
By Peter Popham in Rome - 26 December 2007 - http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3284889.ece


A former officer in Uruguay's naval intelligence was in jail in southern Italy yesterday .... arrest of Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli, 60, in Salerno, southern Italy, was the first result of a new push by Italian authorities who have been trying for years to prosecute former leaders and officials from Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay who collaborated with each other in running death squads to eliminate their common enemies.......
Among the thousands of deaths of which they are accused is the assassination of Orlando Leletier, a former minister in Salvador Allende's Chilean government, in a 1976 car bomb in Washington.

... former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ... was also on the list of the Italian prosecutors published this week, along with five other deceased conspirators........

The investigation against former officials who allegedly conspired in Operation Condor was launched several years ago by Giancarlo Capaldo, the Roman prosecutor behind this week's arrest, after he received reports that Italian citizens had been among those murdered during the long-running attempt to eliminate left-wing opponents to military rule in South America.

The plot between the six countries, details of which have emerged only slowly since the collapse of the military regimes, is said to have been .....

.... Operation Condor enjoyed at least the tacit support of the US. The enemies were ostensibly armed left-wing guerrillas, but in fact a wide range of opponents were "disappeared", ranging from activists and trade unionists to intellectuals and artists, often with their families. At least 30,000 people are believed to have been eliminated in the Argentinian Dirty War alone......

[Blarch]

27. The US is clearly a threat.

a threat to the entire planet.

How dare we complain about the 9-11 attacks...shame, shame.

I hope the trials bring out the truth, the CIA support, the CIA funding, ect...

[Judi Lynn]

28. Gloves Off for Uruguay Ex Dictator

Gloves Off for Uruguay Ex Dictator

Montevideo, Dec 28 (Prensa Latina) Following incidents during his preventive detention awaiting trial, Uruguayan ex Dictator Gregorio Alvarez may be transferred Friday to a prison for ordinary convicts.

A legal report said the presence of the last de facto president during the military dictatorship (1973-1985) "disturbs normal coexistence" in the Domingo Arenas prison and it was decided to transfer him to the ordinary prison of La Tablada.

Alvarez, aged 82, started a dispute with retired Lt. Col. Jose Nino Gavazzo, with whom he had serious differences during the military regime, and later attempted to leave his cell twice; with the pretext that he needed medical assistance.

Prison authorities also found the bars of his cell smeared with quince jelly, a sweet that in time makes iron easier to saw through.

Guards confiscated two pounds of quince jelly and a file, which relatives had baked in a cake decorated with the phrase "Let innocence Be Valuable to You"

More:
~~~~ link ~~~~

[L. Coyote]

29. A file? Now that's a novel idea. This case led to the Italy arreast.

"Ex Naval officers Juan Carlos Larcebeau, also in preventive detention, and Jorge Troccoli are included in the same trial, but Troccoli fled to Italy where he was captured by INTERPOL and must answer for several missing citizens of Italian origin."

[L. Coyote]

30. ROME, Dec. 27 (UPI) Italy seeks South American officials

UPI has put out a short late report, with US "did not participate in it."

==============
Italy seeks South American officials
Published: Dec. 27, 2007 - ROME, Dec. 27 (UPI)
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/12/27/italy_seeks_south_american_officials/9532/


An Italian prosecutor has issued warrants ... Giancarlo Capaldo, a prosecutor in Rome, has asked the Ministry of Justice to request extradition ....

Capaldo began an investigation into Operation Condor, a South American campaign against leftists, in 1998. Those he is seeking include a former Argentine military leader, Jorge Rafael Videla; two former heads of a junta in Uruguay, Jorge Maria Bordaberry and Gregorio Alvarez; former Peruvian president Francisco Morales; and former Peruvian premier Pedro Richter Prada.

The prosecutor said the United States was aware of Operation Condor but did not participate in it .........

[L. Coyote]

31. Ex Peru President to Testify on Missing Argentines

Ex Peru President to Testify on Missing Argentines
Lima, Dec 28 (Prensa Latina) - http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B397F3553-3722-47DE-A4A9-F69C2B473863%7D)&language=EN


Former Peruvian Military Ruler Francisco Morales Bermudez, on whom an Italian judge issued an arrest warrant, was summoned Friday to testify on the disappearance of four Argentines during his government.

Morales Bermudez and his prime minister, Gen. Pedro Richter, were summoned by ex parliamentarian Javier Diez Canseco, after an Italian judge issued an arrest warrant for their involvement in Operation Condor, a repressive coordination mechanism among South American dictatorships.

Diez Canseco noted that Morales Bermudez and Richter must clarify their responsibilities for the disappearance of Argentine citizens Noemi Gianetti de Molfino, Maria Ines Raverta, Julio Cesar Ramirez and Federico Frias Alberga in the mid 1980s.

According to a thorough parliamentary and journalistic investigation, the four Argentines were tortured and assassinated ......

He denied that his government had coordinated actions with Argentine Dictator Rafael Videla to persecute foreigners in Peru....

[L. Coyote]

32. The Unholy Trinity -- Death Squads, Disappearances, and Torture -- from Latin America to Iraq

The Unholy Trinity -- Death Squads, Disappearances, and Torture -- from Latin America to Iraq
Greg Grandin - December 12, 2007 - http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=14485


The world is made up, as Captain Segura in Graham Greene's 1958 novel Our Man in Havana put it, of two classes: the torturable and the untorturable. "There are people," Segura explained, "who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea."

Then -- so Greene thought -- Catholics, particularly Latin American Catholics, were more torturable than Protestants. Now, of course, Muslims hold that distinction, victims of a globalized network of offshore and outsourced imprisonment coordinated by Washington and knitted together by secret flights, concentration camps, and black-site detention centers. The CIA's deployment of Orwellian "Special Removal Units" to kidnap terror suspects in Europe, Canada, the Middle East, and elsewhere and the whisking of these "ghost prisoners" off to Third World countries to be tortured goes, today, by the term "extraordinary rendition," a hauntingly apt phrase. "To render" means not just to hand over, but to extract the essence of a thing, as well as to hand out a verdict and "give in return or retribution" -- good descriptions of what happens during torture sessions.

In the decades after Greene wrote Our Man in Havana, Latin Americans coined an equally resonant word to describe the terror that had come to reign over most of the continent. Throughout the second half of the Cold War, Washington's anti-communist allies killed more than 300,000 civilians, many of whom were simply desaparecido -- "disappeared." The expression was already well known in Latin America when, on accepting his 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature in Sweden, Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez reported that the region's "disappeared number nearly one hundred and twenty thousand, which is as if suddenly no one could account for all the inhabitants of Uppsala."

When Latin Americans used the word as a verb, they usually did so in a way considered grammatically incorrect -- in the transitive form and often in the passive voice, as in "she was disappeared." The implied (but absent) actor/subject signaled that everybody knew the government was responsible .....

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[L. Coyote]

33. “Quien soy yo?” by Estela Bravo, the award winning documentary

http://www.ahora.co.cu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5940

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“Quien soy yo?” by Estela Bravo, the award winning documentary at the New Latin American Film Festival which was exhibited in the Round table radio and TV program, deals with the so-called Operation Condor and missing children and, of course, their parents.

Everything related to "subversion", or the left, was cannon fodder. The Argentine Military Boards killed guerrillas, intellectuals, artists, teachers, workers and students. About 500 children of those people were handed over to people connected to the regime or, at best, by adoption. The idea was engendered in La Casa Rosada, seat of the de facto government, and was carried out in places stained by hatred like the Navy Mechanics School, the Olimpo Garage and other clandestine detention centres.

Videla, Massera, Galtieri, surnames of assassins heading the crimes against humanity, dissolved the unions, banned opposition parties, intervened in universities, tortured civilians and invented a covenant of silence that apparently, would guarantee their impunity. .........

The documentary focuses its story on the reality of the separation of children, the continuous efforts made by the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo to bring them back to their families and make justice for the 30,000 victims who disappeared. All is closely related, as it reveals the terrorist policy carried out in the Southern Cone at that time, a modus operandi which reached back to the Nazis in full cry and that had the unqualified support of the US administration.

Never Again, is an open investigation into the human rights of the gray period of dictatorship, involving 959 criminal cases against the killers.....