Wikileaks claims Irishman gunned down in Bolivia was set up

[IScreamSundays]

Source: Irish Central

An Irishman shot to death by the Bolivian Army in April 2009 was lured to his death, a new Wikileaks document claims.

Michael Dwyer, a 24-year-old man from Tipperary, was one of the three men shot in Santa Cruz last April 16th over an alleged plot to assassinate president Evo Morales.

Wikileaks quotes a U.S. Embassy cable which states the government set Dwyer and his fellow paramilitary gang members up in order to attack opponents of the Evo Morales government.

Bolivian investigators later claimed to have found email correspondence linking one of the men shot to Istvan Belovai, a former Hungarian military intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. in 1990 and later became a CIA agent.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Wikileaks-claims-Irishman-gunned-down-in-Bolivia-was-set-up-112769104.html

[tekisui]

1. knr

[DCKit]

2. "...states the government set Dwyer and his fellow paramilitary gang members up..."

But which government set them up?

[jberryhill]

3. Uhmmmm...

Why would someone in the US embassy be reporting to Washington that he/she thought it may be the US government?

As with most of these things, it was reported at the time:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6123026.ece

Costas, the governor of the Santa Cruz region who has clashed with Morales in the past, said he doubted the government’s version of events. “This has been cheaply staged; this is a show,” he said.

[davidinalameda]

5. from the OP

the Bolivian government

who else would want to attack its opponents

[EFerrari]

10. The cable says, the US government believes it was a set up.

But the OP makes it sound as if there is a Wikileaks analysis somewhere, which I can't find.

The plot itself couldn't have been a set up because at least 2 guys that are involved with right wing / State Dept funded front groups left Bolivia when the government was investigating this case because the money was tracking back to them. One of them, Armando Valladares, has a long history of collaborating with CIA and he was forced to resign from this so called Human Rights Foundation shortly after when he stuck his oar into Honduras.

But, if Wikileaks has something new, I'd like to see it. Can't find it, though. Could be this story is garbled.

[molly77]

26. DCKit

Good question. Problem with assassination and drone plane attacks. It is an excuse for murder. Legalized murder.

[Igel]

33. Follow the grammar.

English grammar doesn't change just to avoid discomfirming inferences.

[DCKit]

41. Tell that to Faux Snooze (especially), Teh Republics and the MSM, in general.

I can see some other country pulling this BS to create a little Terra so they can strengthen their grip on their own peoples throats, but this would work for the U.S. as well, in a "Your government isn't keeping you safe! Let's have a revolution!" sorta way.

[jberryhill]

4. So do a lot of Bolivians

From reports at the time....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6123026.ece

Costas, the governor of the Santa Cruz region who has clashed with Morales in the past, said he doubted the government’s version of events. “This has been cheaply staged; this is a show,” he said.

...

One of his 324 Facebook friends was Eduardo Rozsa Flores, who was also killed on Thursday. Flores, of Hungarian and Bolivian heritage, fought in the Balkans in the 1990s.

[Zorro]

6. Can't possibly be true the Bolivian government set him up

DU's resident LatAm conspiracy theorists have too much invested weaving a dubious string of events together to blame the US for this "plot" against Morales.

Their "analysis" of events from thousands of miles away can't possibly be wrong.

[EFerrari]

8. LOL. By the same logic, no one at Langley should be studying Afghanistan. n/t

[Zorro]

24. Yes I'm sure the internet is a much better and more accurate source of data

than the government's data collection resources.

Hahaha.

[EFerrari]

28. You mean, the internets where Wikileaks are published?

:)

[Zorro]

31. Guess it was a setup by the Bolivian government then

if it's on Wikileaks.

Prove my point again, will ya?

[EFerrari]

32. No, the cables show that is the US allegation.

But I can see why this story is being spun. Charges were filed against the perps on 12/18. From the intertubes:

Charges filed in alleged plot to overthrow Bolivian President Morales
By Associated Press
4:49 p.m. EST, December 18, 2010

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia's chief prosecutor has filed charges including terrorism and sedition against 39 people accused in an alleged armed conspiracy against President Evo Morales.

The charges stem from a 2009 raid at a hotel in the city of Santa Cruz in which police killed three alleged mercenaries, including a Bolivian-born veteran of Croatia's independence war.

Morales said at the time that the men were plotting his assassination.

Most of the accused have fled Bolivia. They say the charges are a politically motivated attempt to silence Morales' opponents.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/topic/intl/bolivia-PLGEO00000131.topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?address=102x4665201&az=view_all

[Igel]

34. Allegations tend to be of varying kinds.

This Wikileaks dump was a giant mass of allegations, surmisings, reports (sometimes from eyewitnesses, sometimes 3rd hand, often without much context), rumors, speculation, and the occasional innuendo.

What "we" infer from them seems to vary not so much by the reliability of the documents as what we want to hear and what we already believe.

"We" isn't necessarily you or me or the OP. "We" is the "generalized DUer" is what I get after reading a reading lots of DU posts and barely noticing the names--louder and frequent posters get proportionally higher weighting--as the "surface babble" gets put through my own set of filters for confirmation bias (of course). An allegation saying a bad guy is bad is gospel truth; an allegation casting aspersions on Obama is probably true, with some dissent; an allegation against somebody supported by the loudest posters is simply an allegation. Even though they all have, at the onset, the same likelihood of being accurate. Confirmation bias is a nasty thing to whip, it's a peculiar kind of self-flagellation of some of the most sensitive parts.

It's wrong to conclude that anybody, even Morales himself, set up the guys for execution. Not impossible. Then again, it's also wrong to conclude most of the others allegations made in Wikileaks are true.

[EFerrari]

35. The issue isn't inferences. It's the claim made by the Irish outlet

that Wikileaks makes the allegation when the authors of that claim are the State Department. It's very simple.

[molly77]

29. EFerrari

You are so smart.

[EFerrari]

7. Does anyone have a link to the Wikileaks document

referenced in this article? Because the OP doesn't make any sense at all to me.

There is a cable that says the US suspected the Dwyer and others were "set up" but I can't find analysis on this. The work I saw at the time tracked their money back to the Human Rights Foundation, which is a front group. In order to set that up, the Morales government would have had to infiltrate the State Department. So, I'm confused.

[bemildred]

9. Bizarre babble.

There was no need to invent a terrorist plot in opposition to Morales, there were massacres going on.

[EFerrari]

11. Exactly. Iirc, there were blogs written by white separatists

in Santa Cruz that, at the time, were advocating violence. The depth of the hatred for the first indigenous president of Bolivia is very real.

[EFerrari]

13. These are the articles linked at Wikileaks. Don't see any on Bolivia:

http://wikileaks.ch/Paraguay-president-may-need-a.html

[AlphaCentauri]

12. I don't believe in UFOs

but anything is posible

CIA forms WikiLeaks Task Force (aka WTF) to investigate impact of leaks by whistleblower website


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/12/22/2010-1222_cia_forms_wikileaks_task_force_aka_wtf_to_investigate_impact_of_leaks_by_whistle.html#ixzz19uE4EQmT

Are CIA Assets Faking News?
http://www.ufodigest.com/article/are-cia-assets-faking-news

[EFerrari]

16. This story is in error. The author is attributing to Wikileaks

the @ss covering speculations of the US government as set out in the cables.

[AlphaCentauri]

19. We'll probably see a war of leaks in the near future, the wikileaks and the official leaks

which mean creating confusion would discredit wikileaks.

[EFerrari]

20. Making lemonade out of lemons. Sure. n/t

[eleny]

14. I've been reading Russ Baker's Family of Secrets....

And am open to how some of what's put out there for our consumption shouldn't make much sense to us at all.

I've been reading Wikipedia and articles on the web about the people involved in this incident and organizations/companies they've been involved with or worked for.

A cable of this sort doesn't surprise me since it appears to be common practice to develop written trails that would build a desired reality. But you already know that. ;-)

[EFerrari]

18. Yep. It's interesting because one of the guys involved in this

Armando Valladares, was forced to resign from the front group "Human Rights Foundation" shortly after when he publicly backed the murdering, raping, kidnapping coup in Honduras. That was too much even for HRF. :)

ARMANDO VALLADARES RENUNCIA A LA HRF

http://hrfbolivia.blogspot.com/2009/07/armando-valladares-renuncia-la-hrf.html

[Bacchus39]

15. from OP link

The cable appears to be backed up by evidence from La Razon newspaper in Bolivia, which received photographs dated from January 2007 and appeared to show Capt Andrade socialising with Rózsa Flores.

[EFerrari]

17. There is no link to any analysis by Wikileaks. n/t

[Bacchus39]

21. see el Pais they have copies of cables

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/EE/UU/sospecha/Gobierno/Bolivia/simulo/trama/terrorista/elpepuint/20101229elpepuint_17/Tes

[EFerrari]

23. The issue isn't the existance of the cables. They have been out for a while

and are hosted at the Bolivian VP's site.

The issue is that Irish Central's article attributes US government claims to Wikileaks in the absence of any link to any analysis by Wikileaks.

[Bacchus39]

36. I think the issue is whether it was a set up and these guys were executed

I doubt that specific cable is on the Bolivian gov site. did you look for it??? if you find it I don't see why you need an analysis by someone else to tell you what it means. they are written in English

[EFerrari]

38. This is now officially tedious. The claim made by IrishCentral

is that Wikileaks alleges a set up. Wikileaks hasn't done that.

[Bacchus39]

39. here is a story from El Pais en better grammar, but the real issue is the possible execution

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/EE/UU/sospecha/Gobierno/Bolivia/simulo/trama/terrorista/elpepuint/20101229elpepuint_17/Tes
The three killed were Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a
Bolivian with multiple passports including Hungarian and
Croatian; Michael Dwyer, Irishman; and Arpad Magyarosi, a
Romanian of Hungarian descent. The police captured Mario
Tadic Astorga, a Bolivian of Croatian descent, and Elod
Toaso, a Hungarian. Initial reports, including a statement
from Vice President Garcia Linera, indicated there was a
30-minute gun battle between the police and the alleged
terrorists, but Hungarian Ambassador to Argentina Matyas
Jozsa said he believed the three were simply executed,
without any fight. Later press reports stated that an
examination of the hotel rooms showed no bullet holes in the
facing wall, and that one of the three was found in the
morgue with his hands bound.

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Cable/Embajada/EEUU/operacion/antiterrorista/emprendida/Gobierno/Bolivia/elpepuint/20101229elpepuint_19/Tes

[eleny]

25. Babelfish translation....

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpais.com%2Farticulo%2Finternacional%2FEE%2FUU%2Fsospecha%2FGobierno%2FBolivia%2Fsimulo%2Ftrama%2Fterrorista%2Felpepuint%2F20101229elpepuint_17%2FTes&lp=es_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

[rAVES]

22. I haven't seen a cable release on wikileaks since the 18th of December

where are these stories coming from?

[EFerrari]

27. And these cables were already out by at least 12/8

when the Bolivian government started hosting them.

[molly77]

30. rAVES

PsyOps. Wayne Madsen and other similar are saying WikiLeaks is CIA. Of course, Wayne , himself , is former CIA.

[Peace Patriot]

37. Very sloppy headline writing! Deliberate? Dunno.

The text says: "An Irishman shot to death by the Bolivian Army in April 2009 was lured to his death, a new Wikileaks document claims"

That is just barely true--with a bit of guessing. They MEAN: "..a U.S. diplomatic document released by Wikileaks claims."

But the headline is even worse: "Wikileaks claims Irishman gunned down in Bolivia was set up."

This is just completely misleading.

This is one of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables that Wilileaks RELEASED. Wikileaks did not write it. Wikileaks did not not even acquire it. It was posted to Wilileaks by an anonymous whistleblower. The writer making these allegations was a U.S. diplomat and, as with many of these cables, that diplomat has agendas and motives that we must guess at in interpreting the cables. Could be that the local U.S. diplomat was involved in the plot against Morales and didn't have permission to be. Could be that this low security diplomatic correspondence was intended to be leaked, or at least that the writer of it was well aware of its leakability--and was doing some ass-covering for himself and/or the U.S. government. The cable smells of misdirection. Its thesis--that the Morales government set up these Morales assassins in order to attack the violent white separatists and fascists (who had already committed murders as well as mayhem) is absurd. It also smells of projection--that is, this is the very sort of thing that our multinational corporate/war profiteer spooks working at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies think up in order to try to destroy democracy in Latin America and commit other dirty deeds in the world. Morales has an approval rating in the 60% to 70% range. He DOESN'T NEED to do rotten things like this to discredit the opposition. They are quite skilled at discrediting themselves.

[dipsydoodle]

40. It's a joke post

but not through any fault of IScreamSundays. Any such headlines going back to one sole source, in this case Irish Central , out of the normal loop on Wikileaks are suspicious.

Maybe we need a clutching at straws forum. :shrug: