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<div id=":9g"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2019/08/five-in-operation-condor-sentenced-to.html?fbclid=IwAR0eBxArLhyYLBC3U1zQdvq_YQYCJ0slaq7fixwftsk_d0W3MIWojVPuny0">https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2019/08/five-in-operation-condor-sentenced-to.html?fbclid=IwAR0eBxArLhyYLBC3U1zQdvq_YQYCJ0slaq7fixwftsk_d0W3MIWojVPuny0</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Five in Operation Condor sentenced to
life: U.S. trained assassins for torture and assassinations in
the Americas</h1>
Brenda Norrell - August 8, 2019<br>
<p><span><b>
Five in Operation Condor sentenced to life: U.S. trained
assassins for torture and assassinations in the Americas</b></span></p>
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<p>
A court in Italy has sentenced five in Operation Condor to
life in prison. The United States has never been held
responsible for its role, including training those who
carried out the kidnappings, torture, disappearances and
assassinations in Central and South America during the
1970s and 1980s. Tucson residents played an important role
in bringing 10,000 Indigenous Peoples across the border to
safety during the Sanctuary Movement, creating local
support and an underground railroad north, for students,
farmers, mothers, and human rights activists, who
struggled against the horror of these regimes. The U.S.
trained torturers from the School of the Americas were
known for throwing young people from helicopters, and
large scale massacres of Indigenous Peoples and students,
followed by dynamiting their bodies. Torture was
widespread. Amnesty International workers were among those
targeted. It was in this way that the United States placed
those never elected as heads of governments in Central and
South America, those who were involved in the torture and
assassinations. Today, we see the results as people flee
the longstanding horror of these governments. Now, as they
arrive, once again, they face abuse, imprisonment and
torture. Now, even their children face these horrors in
the U.S.</p>
<p><span><b>Censored News</b></span></p>
<p>TUCSON -- The Campaign of Terror -- the torture,
kidnappings, disappearances and assassinations -- in South
America, were carried out by those trained by the United
States, during Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and
Reagan administrations.</p>
<p><span>Although the United States has never been held
accountable, this week an Italian court sentenced five
South American government and military officials to life
sentences for their roles assassinations of Italian
nationals, during this U.S. backed dirty Cold War in the
1970s and 1980s.</span></p>
<p><span>The United States stated at the time it knew of the
disappearances and dynamiting of bodies by those it had
trained. The goal was to silence human rights activists,
and grassroots Indigenous Peoples, students and others
struggling for justice. The United States has never been
held accountable.</span><br>
<span><br>
</span>
<span>Rebecca Gordon, describes the US CIA role in torture
in her article </span><span><i>Crimes of the War on
Terror: Should George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Others Be
Jailed?</i></span><br>
<span></span><span><i><br>
</i></span><i><span>"The cold was terrible but the
screams were worse," Sara Mendez </span><a
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36394820">told</a><span> the
BBC. "The screams of those who were being tortured
were the first thing you heard and they made you
shiver."</span></i><span><br>
<br>
"A <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0Q%2B5zJSLcjFnbVuXK%2FkHUSc6xL1BETKw">CIA
intelligence report </a>describes how the dynamiting
of the bodies of 30 people executed in Argentina in
1976, scattering their remains widely, was meant to
intimidate other so-called militants into being quiet
just months after the military coup. <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=H9FCQ7nHnIBwd0pWw7Jy2Cc6xL1BETKw">Another
CIA report </a>describes how Operation Condor
targeted officials with Amnesty International and other
human rights groups and planned overseas missions in
Europe to ‘liquidate’ 'targets'," School of Americas SOA
Watch reports.</span></p>
<p><span>Tucson played an important role in saving the lives
of more than 10,000 Indigenous Peoples. Residents of
Tucson and the area brought thousands of Indigenous
People across the border in Arizona to safety, in the
Sanctuary Movement. They risked their own lives and
freedom to create an underground railroad north and
local support during the 1970s and 1980s.</span></p>
<div id=":9g">
<p><span>Much of this support was based at U.S. military
installations in Panama.</span></p>
<p>
<span>"It was there that the US Army opened the School
of the Americas in 1946, which would graduate 11 Latin
American heads of state over the following decades.
None of them became their country’s leader by
democratic means, leading critics to dub the SOA
“School of Assassins” and “School of Coups” because it
produced so many of both," Common Dreams reports.</span><span></span></p>
<p><b><i>Brett Wilkins at <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/17/five-men-sentenced-life-operation-condor-killings-trained-school-americas">Common
Dreams reports:</a></i></b></p>
<p>Five of the 24 men <a
href="https://www.apnews.com/50d72705696c49109a9bee22b6fb4434">sentenced
last week</a> by an Italian court to life in prison
for their roles in a brutal and bloody U.S.-backed Cold
War campaign against South American dissidents graduated
from a notorious US Army school once known for teaching
torture, assassination, and democracy suppression.</p>
<p>On July 8 judges in Rome’s Court of Appeals sentenced
the former Bolivian, Chilean, Peruvian and Uruguayan
government and military officials after they were found
guilty of kidnapping and murdering 23 Italian nationals
in the 1970s and 1980s during <a
href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/events/operation-condor-1968-1989">Operation
Condor</a>, a coordinated effort by right-wing
military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay,
Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil—and, later, Peru and
Ecuador—against perceived leftist threats. The campaign,
which was characterized by kidnappings, torture,
disappearances and murder, claimed an estimated <a
href="https://www.dw.com/en/italy-jails-24-south-americans-over-condor-era-killings/a-49517886">60,000
lives</a>, according to human rights groups. Victims
included leftists and other dissidents, clergy,
intellectuals, academics, students, peasant and trade
union leaders, and indigenous peoples.</p>
<p>The United States government—including military and
intelligence agencies—supported Operation Condor with
military aid, planning, and technical support as well as
surveillance and torture training during the Johnson,
Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations. Much of
this support, which the U.S. attempted to justify within
the context of the global Cold War struggle against
communism, was based at U.S. military installations in
Panama. It was there that the US Army opened the School
of the Americas in 1946, which would graduate 11 Latin
American heads of state over the following decades. None
of them became their country’s leader by democratic
means, leading critics to dub the SOA “School of
Assassins” and “School of Coups” because it produced so
many of both.</p>
<p>SOA’s most notorious graduates include
narco-trafficking Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega,
the genocidal Guatemalan military dictator <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/04/03/former-us-backed-guatemalan-dictator-efrain-rios-montt-dies-facing-genocide-charges">Efraín
Ríos Montt</a>, Bolivian despot Hugo Banzer (known for
sheltering Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie), Haitian
death squad commander and military dictator Raoul Cédras
and Argentine strongman Leopoldo Galtieri, who presided
during a period of his country’s “Dirty War” in which
tens of thousands of innocent men and women were
disappeared. Countless other war criminals have studied
at the SOA, sometimes using <a
href="https://www.lawg.org/declassified-army-and-cia-manuals/">U.S.
manuals</a> that taught kidnapping, torture,
assassination, and democracy suppression techniques.</p>
<span>Some of the worst massacres and other atrocities
perpetrated by U.S.-backed forces during the civil wars
in El Salvador and Guatemala during the 1980s, including
the slaughter of 900 villagers—mostly women and
children—at <a
href="http://www.markdanner.com/articles/the-truth-of-el-mozote">El
Mozote</a>, the assassination of Salvadoran archbishop
<a
href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/romero-assassination-case-re-opened-el-salvador">Óscar
Romero</a> and the <a
href="https://nacla.org/article/training-assassins">rape
and murder</a> of four U.S. churchwomen who worked
with him, were planned, committed or covered up by SOA
graduates. So were a series of <a
href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB259/index.htm">chainsaw
massacres</a> in Colombia, the murder of four Dutch
journalists in El Salvador, the <a
href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB532-The-Letelier-Moffitt-Assassination-Papers/">assassination</a>
of a former Chilean official and his U.S. aide in a 1976
car bombing in Washington, D.C. and many other
atrocities.
<p>It can now be revealed that several men sentenced to
life in prison in Rome last week are also SOA
graduates. <a
href="http://www.soaw.org/soa-whinsec-graduates/">According
to a database</a> of over 60,000 SOA alumni compiled
from U.S. military records by School of the Americas
Watch (SOAW), a Georgia-based activist group founded
by Father Roy Bourgeois in 1990, five SOA trainees are
among the 24 men found guilty by the Italian court.
Two of them are named among SOAW’s “most notorious SOA
graduates”: former Bolivian interior minister <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/10/luis-arce-gomez-bolivia-deported">Luis
Arce Gómez</a>, who is currently serving a 30-year
prison term for genocide, assassination and drug
trafficking, and <a
href="https://staging.trialinternational.org/latest-post/luis-alfredo-maurente-mata/">Luis
Alfredo Maurente</a>, a Uruguayan captain implicated
in the torture and disappearance of nearly 100 people
in Uruguay and Argentina. Arce Gomez completed
communications, tactical officer and radio repair
courses at SOA in 1958; Maurente attended SOA in 1969
and 1976, studying military intelligence. The three
other SOA graduates uncovered among the 24 defendants
are: Hernán Ramírez Ramírez (Chile; command course,
1970), Ernesto Avelino Ramas Pereira (Uruguay; motor
officer course, 1962) and Pedro Antonio Mato Narbondo
(Uruguay; unspecified, 1970).</p>
<p>SOA operated in Panama from 1946 until 1984, when it
was relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia. In a bid to
rebrand itself amid growing public outcry over
graduate atrocities, SOA changed its named to the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
(WHINSEC) in 2000, with a greater emphasis on human
rights. However, the school’s alumni continue to make
dubious headlines to this day, with <a
href="https://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/1/generals_who_led_honduras_military_coup">four
of the six generals</a>behind the 2009 Honduran coup
and <a
href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103178523">former
Mexican commandos</a> now employed as mercenaries
for international drug cartels among its more
notorious recent alumni.</p>
<p>It is unclear whether many of the defendants in the
Rome case will face justice, as all but one of the 24
were tried in absentia under the legal concept of
universal jurisdiction. Uruguay, which does not allow
for life sentences, has previously jailed people
convicted of similar crimes. A <a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38659230">January
2017 ruling</a> by an Italian court had sentenced
eight of the defendants, including the late former
Bolivian dictator Luis García Meza, former Peruvian
president Francisco Morales Bermúdez, and former
Uruguayan foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco— who is
now under house arrest in Montevideo—to life behind
bars, while acquitting 19 others due to statutes of
limitations. Those acquittals were reversed by
Monday’s appellate decision.</p>
</span><br>
<span><b><i>School of Americas reports:<br>
<br>
</i></b>In July, an Italian appeals court sentenced 24
former officials from Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay
to life in prison for their roles in Operation Condor --
a brutal and extremely deadly US-backed operation in the
1970s and 1980s that targeted leftists, activists,
social movement leaders, and others who spoke out.
Operation Condor kidnapped, tortured, disappeared and/or
murdered an estimated 60,000 people across South
America. As reported in an <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=3pPYlE%2BTbz2sHf3K7Wq2d97da9UXNIkj">article
on Common Dreams</a>, 5 of the 24 former officials
from South American dictatorships sentenced by the
Italian court were trained at the U.S. Army School of
the Americas. <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=x07CEmSHSSlIe3lxGCKjtic6xL1BETKw">Read
more here</a>.
<p>Italian nationals were among those who were
kidnapped, forcibly disappeared, and murdered by
Operation Condor, leading families of the victims to
start this case in the Italian justice system two
decades ago. A 2017 lower court ruling had sentenced 8
of the defendants but the others had been acquitted
because of the statute of limitations. The appeals
court decision this July reverses the acquittals.
However, it is unknown if the sentences will be
implemented as only one of the defendants was present;
the majority were tried in absentia. </p>
<p>Declassified documents posted by the <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=84LGsJCo0AFy7Y3bnJzsPyc6xL1BETKw">National
Security Archive</a> illustrate why it is vitally
important to hold the United States responsible for
its support of Operation Condor. A <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4govDsR0Qw3FSwOnez30GN7da9UXNIkj">six
page cable from the US Embassy in Argentina</a> to
the State Department in 1980 reported that the
Argentine military would not stop using disappearance
as a preferred tactic and attempted to explain why. A
<a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=0Q%2B5zJSLcjFnbVuXK%2FkHUSc6xL1BETKw">CIA
intelligence report </a>describes how the
dynamiting of the bodies of 30 people executed in
Argentina in 1976, scattering their remains widely,
was meant to intimidate other so-called militants into
being quiet just months after the military coup. <a
href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=H9FCQ7nHnIBwd0pWw7Jy2Cc6xL1BETKw">Another
CIA report </a>describes how Operation Condor
targeted officials with Amnesty International and
other human rights groups and planned overseas
missions in Europe to ‘liquidate’ 'targets'. There
will not be true justice until the US government is
also held to account for its role in financing,
training, and supporting Operation Condor’s atrocities
throughout the Southern Cone. </p>
<p>The SOA graduates convicted by the Italian court are
Luis Arce Gomez of Bolivia, who is already serving a
30 year sentence for genocide, Luis Alfredo Maurente
of Uruguay, Hernan Ramírez Ramírez of Chile, Pedro
Antonio Mato of Uruguay, and Ernesto Avelino Ramas
Pereira of Uruguay. </p>
<p>These are not the only SOA graduates who have been in
the news recently. Also in Italy, SOA graduate Walter
Klug of Chile was detained. Klug was hiding from
justice, and is accused of murdering 7 people and
forcibly disappearing 16 others in the 1970s. SOA
graduate Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba, also of Chile, was
recently accused of embezzlement of more than 5
million dollars of public funds, and fellow SOA
graduate Antonio Cordero Kehr was accused of emitting
false invoices. </p>
<p>We are grateful to all those who continue to work day
after day, year after year, to advance truth and
justice for the atrocities committed during Operation
Condor. </p>
<p>Join us in remembering those who were murdered and
disappeared at the hands of SOA graduates and calling
for the closure of the SOA-WHINSEC this November 15-17
at Ft. Benning, Georgia. </p>
</span></div>
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