2 convicted in Dirty War death of Argentine bishop

[Judi Lynn]

2 convicted in Dirty War death of Argentine bishop
| July 4, 2014 | Updated: July 4, 2014 3:46pm

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Two former senior military officers were sentenced to life in prison Friday for one of the emblematic crimes of the country's long dictatorship: the death of Roman Catholic Bishop Enrique Angelelli

The court in the northern city of La Rioja imposed life sentences on former army chief Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 86, and former Vice-Commodore Luis Fernando Estrella, 82.

Details of the ruling are to be released in September.

Angelelli was one of the most left-leaning bishops in a generally conservative religious establishment when he died in an automobile crash in August 1976, shortly after the military seized power and began a Dirty War crackdown on suspected leftists.

For decades, officials insisted the death was accidental.

The case was reopened in 2010 when a former priest who had been riding with the bishop, Arturo Pinto, said that their car had been forced off the road.

More:
http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/2-convicted-in-Dirty-War-death-of-Argentine-bishop-5600457.php

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Kissinger approved Argentinian 'dirty war'
Declassified US files expose 1970s backing for junta

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian, Friday 5 December 2003 21.20 EST

Henry Kissinger gave his approval to the "dirty war" in Argentina in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed, according to newly declassified US state department documents.
Mr Kissinger, who was America's secretary of state, is shown to have urged the Argentinian military regime to act before the US Congress resumed session, and told it that Washington would not cause it "unnecessary difficulties".

The revelations are likely to further damage Mr Kissinger's reputation. He has already been implicated in war crimes committed during his term in office, notably in connection with the 1973 Chilean coup.

The material, obtained by the Washington-based National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, consists of two memorandums of conversations that took place in October 1976 with the visiting Argentinian foreign minister, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti. At the time the US Congress, concerned about allegations of widespread human rights abuses, was poised to approve sanctions against the military regime.

According to a verbatim transcript of a meeting on October 7 1976, Mr Kissinger reassured the foreign minister that he had US backing in whatever he did.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/06/argentina.usa

[Judi Lynn]

1. Reagan and Argentina’s Dirty War

Reagan and Argentina’s Dirty War
May 17, 2013

Exclusive: The 87-year-old ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Videla died Friday in prison where he was serving sentences for grotesque human rights crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. But one of Videla’s key backers, the late President Ronald Reagan, continues to be honored by Americans, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The death of ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, a mastermind of the right-wing state terrorism that swept Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, means that one more of Ronald Reagan’s old allies is gone from the scene.

Videla, who fancied himself a theoretician of anti-leftist repression, died in prison at age 87 after being convicted of a central role in the Dirty War that killed some 30,000 people and involved kidnapping the babies of “disappeared” women so they could be raised by military officers who were often implicated in the murders of the mothers.

The leaders of the Argentine junta also saw themselves as pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. Indeed, the chilling word “disappeared” was coined in recognition of their novel tactic of abducting dissidents off the streets, torturing them and then murdering them in secret – sometimes accomplishing the task by chaining naked detainees together and pushing them from planes over the Atlantic Ocean.

With such clandestine methods, the dictatorship could leave the families in doubt while deflecting international criticism by suggesting that the “disappeared” might have traveled to faraway lands to live in luxury, thus combining abject terror with clever propaganda and disinformation.

To pull off the trick, however, required collaborators in the U.S. news media who would defend the junta and heap ridicule on anyone who alleged that the thousands upon thousands of “disappeared” were actually being systematically murdered. One such ally was Ronald Reagan, who used his platform as a newspaper and radio commentator in the late 1970s to minimize the human rights crimes underway in Argentina – and to counter the Carter administration’s human rights protests.

More:
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/17/reagan-and-argentinas-dirty-war/