'Dirty War' trial begins

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

'Dirty War' trial begins
Posted on Fri, Oct. 19, 2007
By OSCAR SERRAT
Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES -- The first trial involving alleged torture at Argentina's most notorious clandestine military prison began Thursday with a former coast guard officer possibly facing life in prison. Héctor Febres is accused of kidnapping and torturing four people who were seized by the government and taken to the Navy Mechanics' School during the 1976-83 military regime.

Argentine prosecutors have brought charges against former state security agents and their civilian allies for alleged crimes committed during the ''Dirty War,'' when the government tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftists. The Navy Mechanics' School was the largest clandestine torture center of the era. An estimated 4,500 prisoners passed through its cells and many were never seen again. Up to 30,000 people ''disappeared'' during the seven-year junta rule.

Febres, 66, was a torturer known for using extreme violence against victims, Carlos Lordkipanidse, a survivor who was expected to testify at the trial, said recently.

'We called him `Jungle' because he was like all animals together,'' the victim told reporters before the trial.



Hector Febres, defendant

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



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/276808.html

---

Connection to Henry Kissinger:

Kissinger approved Argentinian 'dirty war'


Declassified US files expose 1970s backing for junta

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian

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.

More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1101121,00.html

[RainDog]

1. again, thank you for posting these threads

I wonder if any of this has been on tv? (I really wouldn't know.)

definite recommend!

[Judi Lynn]

2. They don't believe they want us to worry our "beautiful minds" with scary old stories like this,

especially since they involve people like Henry Kissinger and our own Republican government, so they just don't bother to do them. Ever.

Creepy, isn't it?

[otherlander]

7. I bet that even Keith wouldn't run this story.

Maybe Steven Colbert will express some fake outrage that these wonderful friends of our government are going to jail?

[Peace Patriot]

3. It is good to be reminded of these past horrors, as preface to our CURRENT horrors,

all hatched in the same sick Republican minds. I don't have any illusions about our Democratic leaders, but, while they often cover up Republican torture and murder, they don't tend to initiate it (--with the exception of the Vietnam War, back in the '60s, in which they were almost all complicit; the Democrats did "learn the lessons of Vietnam"--to some extent--but then most of them "forgot" those lessons when it came to Iraq). And I don't want to downplay the role of the cover uppers--which we are seeing much of today. I just think it's a different kind of mind than that of Kissinger, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush, and one that is, in some cases, more reachable by the screams of agony of the tortured and dying.

In addition to the millions of tortured and slaughtered people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and other Mideast-oil related horror, we are finding that Bush Junta client states, Colombia and Guatemala, are rife with horrible tortures and murders of peasant farmers, union organizers and political leftists, office holders, candidates for office and journalists-- today, real time. The Bush Junta pours billions and billions of our tax dollars into the militaries of these two murderous states, and rewards their rich elites with "free trade" booty (sweatshop labor, selling off their countries resources). If we had access to Bush Junta records, we would no doubt find direct Bushite involvement in these many murders--just as Kissinger's connection to the torture and slaughter in Argentina, and Reagan's connection to the slaughter of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers, in the 1980s, in Guatemala, have been uncovered--too late to pin on Reagan (but maybe could get Reagan airports and battleships re-named, and statues toppled, if we ever get a decent government in the U.S. again), but not too late to pin on Kissinger, who is still alive, but under the protection of our secret government and its war profiteer/global corporate predator allies, aided by Democratic Party cover uppers.

Today, right now, it's happening again--in Colombia and Guatemala--plus U.S./Bushite funding/instigation of plots to bring about horror states in Venezuela, Bolivia and other places. And the billions and billions of dollars that the Bush Junta is pouring into the murderous and phony "war on drugs"--in Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and other client states--mostly with the complicity of the so-called Democratic Congress--is for the purpose of MORE slaughter and repression.

The very amazing and wonderful thing that has happened is that South Americans are fighting back. Country after country has gone leftist, and Bolivarian principles of Latin American self-determination, and social justice, and opposition to U.S. interference, have swept the continent. One result is that there are actually investigations and trials of the criminals who cooperate with U.S./ fascist corporate goals, including current investigations and trials in Colombia--by courageous human rights activists, prosecutors and judges--of CURRENT rightwing death squads. I have no doubt at all that these torturers and assassins have close ties to the Bushites. Their close ties to the Uribe government (funded by the Bushites) have been established. Also, the Bushites were advised, by a conscience-stricken (or scared) Chiquita Banana executive, of Chiquita's payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to rightwing death squads, to eliminate union organizers, and did absolutely nothing about it--winked at it--until the victims' families filed suit in the U.S., and then the Bushites helped kill that prosecution.

So, one way or another--through further investigation in Colombia, Guatemala (if that occurs) and other countries, and tracking of USAID-NED funds, and of more secretive funds--I hope the dots get connected, and Bushites get caught, or at least, we eventually KNOW what has been done in our name, in Latin America, in the last six years. I hope it doesn't take four decades. But I don't imagine Queen Hillary--whose PR firm, Penn and Schoen, and political adviser James Carville, have been tied to Bushite USAID-NED funds in Venezuela (aid to rightwing groups plotting Chavez's overthrow, by an means necessary)--will be much help in exposing the "beautiful minds" of our Republican and global corporate predators overlords.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Reading the last paragraph of your comments reminded me that Uribe hired Hillary Clinton's PR firm

to do a lot of work for him prior to his last campaign to raise support in Congress. Went to find more about it, saw this info. you might find interesting:

Friday, May 25, 2007
AP: Clinton Aides Being Paid By Colombian Government to Push Trade Deal

Well, it's a bad week, and the hits just keep on coming. In a stunning new report from the Associated Press, we find out that the Colombian Government - the government that the Washington Post notes collaborates with paramilitary gangs to execute union leaders - is now paying top aides to Sen. Hillary Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to help get Congress to pass the U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement:

"According to Justice Department filings, Colombia agreed this month to pay $300,000 to public relations firm Burson-Marsteller - whose president, Mark Penn, is a senior advisor to Sen. Clinton - to help "educate members of the U.S. Congress and other audiences" about the trade deal and secure continued U.S. funding for the $5 billion anti-narcotics program Plan Colombia.The filings also show that last month Uribe’s government put The Glover Park Group, a Washington D.C.-based lobbying firm that includes former Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart, on a $40,000 a month retainer."

AP reports that "last month, former Vice President Al Gore backed out of an environmental conference in Miami to avoid appearing alongside Uribe, who has struggled to defend himself against charges that members of his family and government supporters collaborated with murderous right-wing militias." Yet on June 8, former President Clinton will attend a Colombian government gala in his honor. AP says that "prominent Democrats on the guest list include former Clinton strategists Dick Morris and Vernon Jordan, former Clinton Cabinet members Lawrence Summers and Madeleine Albright, and several Democratic congressmen." Morris, by the way, just penned an article referring to the scandal-plagued, paramilitary-connected Uribe as a "democratic beacon."
(snip)

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/05/ap_clinton_aides_being_paid_by.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, Mrs. Clinton is brought into this unhappy arrangement in part due to her husband's co-sponsorship of Plan Colombia with former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana. Very, VERY sad situation.

At least Al Gore saw no reason to bow down to these creeps.

[Lisa]

5. Nunca Mas (link to report by Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons)

http://www.nuncamas.org/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_001.htm

Just reading the headers is horrifying. Thank you for starting this thread, Judi Lynn.



Part I. The Repression

A. General introduction

B. Abduction

Anonymous groups or gangs who forced their way into homes at night
The green light (or 'free zone')
Abductions in the presence of children
Hostages and 'mousetraps'
'War booty'
Torture in the victim's home
End of the kidnapping
'Walling up'

C. Torture

D. Secret Detention Centres (SDCs)

General considerations
Location of the Secret Detention Centres
Living conditions in the Detention Centres
'Walling Up'
Each prisoner would be given a number
Torture
Personnel
Food
Health conditions
Hygiene
Transfers
Anti-Semitism
Collaboration of prisoners

E. Description of Individual Secret Detention Centres

General considerations
Contents of Secret Detention Centres (SDCs)

F. Death as a political weapon: extermination

Mass executions by firing squad

The 'pit'on the Loma del Torito
Executions by firing squad in Quilmes
Deaths in 'armed confrontations'
Disappearance and death of Ricardo Adrián Pérez and María G. Esther Cubas de Pérez (file N°. 32)
Deaths in 'escape attempts' - file N°. 6131
Prisoners thrown into the sea
Other methods of disposing of bodies: incineration and immersion

The 'La Chacarita' Cemetery: some figures worth analysis file No. 6983
Disappearance and death of Jacobo Chester - File N° 1333
Disappearance and death of Floreal Avellaneda - File N° 1639
A Discovery in San Pedro, Buenos Aires province - File N° 1296
'Bodies are not handed over'
Deposition on secret burials in La Plata
Deposition on the existence of unmarked graves in Moreno
Exhumation of unnamed corpses at the Rafael Calzada Cemetery
Deposition on secret burials in the San Martín Cemetery
Exhumation of corpses at the Grand Bourg Cemetery
Irregular burials in the Avellaneda Cemetery - File N° 7316
Common graves in the San Vicente Cemetery - File N° 1420
Why did the bodies disappear?


G. The implications of 'impunity'

The kidnapping of Drs. Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen and Mario A. Amaya
The calvary of Dr. Rafael Perrota
The Journalist Jacobo Timmerman
Adriana Landaburu
The diplomat Elena Holmberg and the advertising agent Marcelo Dupont
The Uruguayan politicians Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz
Professor Alfredo Bravo


H. Agents and structures of repression

I. The attitudes of some members of the Church

J. Questionnaires sent to former officials of the de facto government

K. The coordination of repression in Latin America

Testimony of Osiris Irineo Ayala - File N° 6364
Testimony of Matilde Artes Company, mother and grandmother of the disappeared Graciela Antonia Rutilo Artes and Carla Graciela Rutilo Artes - Files N° 6333 and 7243
Disappearance of Claudio Ernesto Logares, Mónica Sofía Grispón de Logares, and Paula Eva Logares - Files N° 1982, 1983, and 1984
Disappearance of Aída Celia Sanz Fernández and Esla Fernández de Sanz - Files N° 7162 and 7227
Deposition made by Enrique Rodríguez Larreta Piera - File N° 2539
Deposition of Alberto Illarzen and his wife - File N° 4086
Deposition of Washington Rodríguez - File N° 4085
Conclusions on the links in international repression


L. Documentation

LL. Registration of those arrested-disappeared

Documents recording the existence of secret detention centres
Certificates of procedure
Falsification of documents
Certificates of goods seized from the homes of victims
Alteration of documents

M. The profits of repression

Disappearance of Dr. Rafael A. Perrotta - File N° 1222
Disappearance of sr. Federico Manuel Vogelius - File N° 7350
Disappearance of Juan Carlos Rossi - File N° 1948
Disappearance of María Cristina Lennie - File N° 7382
Disappearance of Carlos Alberto Mazza - File N° 2883
Disappearance of María Esther Ravelo de Vega - File N° 3223
Disappearance of María Elena Núñez - File N° 1632
The Gómez - Cerutti - Palma case - Files N° 224, 543 and 749
Testimony of Nilda Noemí Actis Goretta - File N° 6321
Testimony of Silvio Octavio Viotti - File N° 5473
Testimony of Silvio Octavio Viotti, jr. - File N° 758
Testimony of María Dora Turra de Rojas - File N° 4833



Part II. The Victims

Introductory note
The disappeared by age group
The disappeared according to sex
Disappeared 1973-1983

A. Children and pregnant women who disappeared

Births in captivity
The Campo de Mayo Hospital
The relatives: the grandmothers
The effects on children
Identification

B. Adolescents

The youngest
A letter to the Commission (file No. 3338)
Pregnant adolescents
Secondary school students
The memories of the freed prisoners
A father's memory

C. The family as victim

The family as hostage
Families who disappeared
Joint detentions
People over fifty-five still among the disappeared
Those who were able to talk about their experience
Some final reflections

D. The sick and disabled

E. Members of the clergy and religious orders

The Christian faith of the Armed Forces contrasted with the un-Christian nature of the repression
List of victims
The case of the Pallotine Fathers
The case of the Bishop of La Rioja, Monsignor Enrique Angelelli, and of the priests of Chamical, Father Gabriel Longueville and Father Carlos de Dios Murias
The case of the Bishop of San Nicolás de los Arroyos, Monsignor Dr Carlos H. Ponce de León
The French nuns: Sister Alice Domon and Sister Léonie Duquet
Lay people

F. Conscripts

Methods of imprisonment
A common feature in all the official explanations is desertion

G. Journalists

Disappearance of Héctor Ernesto Demarchi - File N° 802
Disappearance of Enrique Raab - File N° 276
Disappearance of Haroldo Pedro Conti - File N° 77
Disappearance of Rodolfo Jorge Walsh - File N° 2587

H. Trade unionists

Agrarian labour representatives
The Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Dagmar Hagelin



Part III. The judiciary during the Repression

Disappearance of Laura Noemí Creatore - File N° 107 - and of Carlos Hugo Capitman - File N° 3795
Testimony of Ramón Miralles - File N° 3757
Testimony of Juan Ramón Nazar - File N° 1557
Irregular burial of corpses by the Judicial Mortuary in Buenos Aires - File N° 7188

A. Habeas Corpus

Disappearance of Dr. Santiago Augusto Díaz - File N° 1252
Disappearance of Jorge Daniel Collado - File N° 230

B. Detainees at the disposition of the National Executive

Disappearance of Guillermo Oscar Segalli - File N° 2456
Disappearance of Carlos Ignacio Boncio - File N° 666
Deposition relating to the disappearance of Dr. Darlo Francisco Molina - File N° 6171
Testimony of Alcides Antonio Chiesa - File N° 634
Testimony of Rubén Victor Saposnik - File N° 1906
Testimony of Gustavo Caraballo - File N° 4206

C. Disappearance of lawyers

Testimony od dr. Liliana María Andrés on the abduction and disappearance of her husband dr. Daniel Antokoletz - File N° 1386
Disappearance of dr. Guillermo Augusto Miguel - File N° 5392
Disappearance of dr. Abdala Auad - File N° 1089
Disappearance and death of dr. Norberto Oscar Centeno - File N° 7289
Disappearance and death of dr. Guillermo Raúl Díaz Lestrem - File N° 2161

D. Searches of human rights organizations

Arrest and Prosecution of members of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) - File N° 7418

E. International solidarity


Part IV. Creation and Organization of the National Commission on the Disappeared

Other aspects of the work undertaken by the National Commission on the Disappeared
Work carried out by the computer department


Part V. The Doctrine behind the Repression


Part VI. Recomendations and Conclusions

Recommendations

Conclusions

[Judi Lynn]

6. This is an exceptional source, Lisa. It really calls out to be studied closely.

A ton of people were involved in putting this enormous work together, and involved through savage, hideous sadism forced upon them by this military junta, approved, encouraged by Henry Kissinger.

[Lisa]

8. there were quotes from it in Naomi Klein's new book

I couldn't bear to read them. I had to go out for a long walk in the rain, just thinking about what those poor people went through (and what the survivors must still be experiencing).

One of my co-workers fled here from South America. A few years ago, I found her crying in her office -- sometimes she has flashbacks. All I could do was hug her.