Chile: Ex-leader's father likely died of torture
Source: Associated Press
Chile: Ex-leader's father likely died of torture
Updated 03:07 p.m., Wednesday, June 20, 2012
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A judge in Chile says investigators have determined that the father of former President Michelle Bachelet apparently died of torture after the 1973 coup in that country.
Judge Mario Carroza said Wednesday that a new forensic study found that Army Gen. Alberto Bachelet probably died of heart problems caused by torture after he was arrested by his comrades in arms because he opposed the military coup that overthrew Socialist President Salvador Allende.
The 51-year-old general died in March 1974.
His daughter became Chile's first female president in 2006. She has run the U.N. women's agency since 2010, when she left the presidency.
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or have imprisoned, kidnapped, beaten and/or threatened them with coups and/or assassination plots.
Michele Batchelet, recent former president of Chile, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs, and her father murdered by them in the course of torture--their crime? being political leftists.
Lula da Silva, recent former president of Brazil, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs for union organizing (steelworkers union).
Dilma Rousseff, current president of Brazil, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs in truly horrible ways, during the same era, for activities related to a leftist guerrilla group who were fighting the U.S.-backed thugs who had taken over their country.
Jose Mujica, current president of Uruguay, imprisoned and tortured by U.S.-backed thugs for activities related to a leftist guerrilla group who were fighting the U.S.-backed thugs who had taken over their country (same era).
Evo Morales, current president of Bolivia, kidnapped and beaten by U.S.-backed thugs in collusion with the DEA, for union organizing (Indigenous coca leaf farmers union). He was also nearly overthrown by U.S.-backed thugs (white separatists) in 2008, organized and funded right out of the U.S. embassy.
Hugo Chavez, current president of Venezuela, kidnapped and his life threatened by U.S.-backed thugs in the 2002 coup attempt.
Daniel Ortega, current president of Nicaragua, never caught by the U.S.-backed thugs (Reagan's henchmen, the "contras"
but saw many of his compadres and other lovers of social justice murdered, in their effort to defeat the brutal, hated, U.S.-backed Somoza regime.
Mel Zelaya, president of Honduras, overthrown in 2009, by U.S.-backed thugs who shot up his house, terrifying his family, dragged him out of bed, kidnapped him and flew him out of his own country at gunpoint, with a refueling stopover at the U.S. military base in Honduras.
The above U.S.-backed thugs, in every case, were funded, "trained," equipped and given every support by the U.S. government, most of them part of the "security state" (military, spies/covert operatives, police), and all of them fascists--the only political stance that the U.S. has ever supported in Latin America.
But "the times they are a-changing"! Are they ever! The above leaders of the leftist democracy movement that has swept South America and parts of Central America, have all been elected by their countries' voters, and are all very popular, and furthermore have joined together in individual alliances and in new institutions to assert their common goals of social justice and independence from the fascist-loving U.S. government.
You wonder what's happening in Latin America these days? Start with this: Something like half of the elected presidents of the region were personally brutalized by U.S.-backed thugs in their youths or more recently. And whatever activities of theirs got them noticed by U.S.-backed fascists, and targeted for torture, kidnapping, overthrow or death, those activities are now "badges of courage" in today's Latin America. THEY have been chosen, by big majorities of the voters in these countries, to lead this revolution.
Their commitment to peace is remarkable in the circumstances. But, really, it takes more courage to be peaceful when you have been harmed than when you have little or nothing at risk. These are very, very courageous people, and they are determined, as individuals and as an allied group, to end the horrific U.S. domination of Latin America and the brutal, bloody, monstrous exploitation of the people of Latin America to benefit the 1%, here and there.
at the hands of Richard Nixon's bloody puppet fascist dictator the C.I.A. assisted in destroying Allende:
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Michelle Bachelet and her father, General Alberto Bachelet.
Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet
General Bachelet, his wife, his son, daughter, Michelle[/center]
Justice for an air force general
Posted on August 26, 2011
General Bachelet's letters were published in 2006.
“They broke me from within. I found myself with comrades from the Chilean air force, whom I had known for 20 years, students of mine, who treated me like a criminal or a dog.” –General Alberto Bachelet, in a letter to his son, October 16, 1973
He refused to go along with the coup and was arrested at his office in the Chilean defense ministry on September 11, 1973. He was released that night, but a few days later his home was raided and he was brought to the Chilean air force academy where he was interrogated and tortured over a 30-hour period by some of his former colleagues. He was moved to the air force hospital and held incommunicado. A few weeks later he was sent home and placed under house arrest, then on December 18 authorities arrested him again and brought him to Santiago’s public jail.
Four months later a war tribunal began against “Bachelet and others.” But General Alberto Bachelet was already dead, having suffered a fatal heart attack while in prison. This blogger received an eyewitness account of Bachelet’s death from Nelson Morales Leal, a former army reserve officer so disturbed by the abuses committed in wake of the coup that while on a day pass he deliberately got himself arrested for disorderly conduct in order go get out of the army. Morales ended up in the same jail with Bachelet and other political detainees. He described how on March 12, 1974 he and his fellow prisoners were being herded out of their cells for lunch when Bachelet collapsed. Morales and other prisoners brought the general back to his cell, where he died. A sympathetic prison guard notified Radio Balmaceda, one of the slightly more independent radio stations still operating after the coup, and the subsequent broadcast prompted authorities to shut down the station.
Bachelet might never have imagined that his daughter Michelle would one day become Latin America’s first female defense minister, and later Chile’s first woman president.And now an investigation has opened into the circumstances of his death, led by the same judge who led the recent inquiry into the death of former president Salvador Allende (which was deemed to have been a suicide). Judge Mario Carroza told Radio Cooperativa that he would review the case, which was presented by a group of relatives of political prisoners who died during the 1973-1990 military regime.
http://notesontheamericas.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/justice-for-an-air-force-general-2/
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Chilean President Michelle Bachelet[/center]
