Latin America
Related: About this forumU.S. Torture Predates 9/11
Last edited Sun Dec 14, 2014, 06:33 PM - Edit history (3)
Weekend Edition December 12-14, 2014
A Sordid History
U.S. Torture Predates 9/11
by COLTEN STOKES
The sordid history of U.S. torture in the Middle East laid bare by the release of the Senate report is explained by some as 9-11 changed everything. The truth, however, is that U.S. support for torture long pre-dates 2001.
~ snip ~
CIA support for torture in Latin America was equally extensive. In Chile, the CIA-supported coup which brought Augusto Pinochet to power brought with it the torture and murder of thousands of left-wing activists. The head of Chiles secret police, the DINA, was a CIA asset. In 1975, DINA agents assassinated the former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 25-year-old American associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in Washington, D.C., itself, but even that didnt put a damper on U.S. support for the regime.
Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. provided training and support for the government in El Salvador, whose death squads routinely used torture as a means of suppressing opposition. The opposite happened in Nicaragua, where the U.S.-supported Contras routinely tortured Nicaraguans who resisted its attempts to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.
In Venezuela, the secret police was called DISIP, and its head and chief torturer in the 1970s was CIA agent and notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Here the story of U.S. involvement with torture takes a different turnthe U.S. supported torture while it was happening but later used the false claim of potential torture to shield Posada from prosecution.
On edit, adding more regarding pre-Chavez Venezuela's torture chief, Cuban "exile" mega-criminal, Luis Posada Carriles:Posada and Orlando Bosch were the masterminds of the 1976 mid-air bombing of Cubana Flight 455, killing all on board. Both escaped justice in Venezuela, and in 2005 Posada entered the U.S. illegally. Venezuela, where Posada is still wanted on 73 counts of murder for the airplane bombing, filed an extradition request.
Nine years later, that request has neither been honored or even answered, but eventually, since Posada was a known terrorist and had entered the U.S. illegally, the U.S. government was forced to move to deport him. During those hearings, a man named Joaquin Chaffardet testified in Posadas defense that if he were extradited to Venezuela, led at the time by Hugo Chávez, he would be tortured. Chaffardet offered no proof for this baseless allegation, and the U.S. government offered no witnesses to rebut him. Of course, Venezuela WAS known to torture prisonerswhen Posada ran the DISIP and it was supported by the U.S.!
And who was Chaffardet? He was Posadas associate at DISIP, a fellow torturer! Later, both left DISIP to form a private investigation firm, a firm that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, and the same firm that employed the two people who actually put the bomb on the plane in 1976. Chaffardet was also indicted of having organized the prison break that sprung Posada from jail in Venezuela after the bombing. And on the basis of his testimony alone, the U.S. refused to extradite Posada to Venezuela, and allows him to live freely in Miami to this day.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/12/u-s-torture-predates-911/
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Some of Latin America's most notorious dictators graduated from the military academy in Fort Benning, Georgia.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/09/201292081054585410.html
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)No doubt whatsoever how the custom of killing innocent campesinos for prizes and loot got started! Colombia's "false positives"!
Overall, the School of the Americas has produced soldiers and generals responsible for the massacre and torture of tens of thousands of people across Latin America.
From among its infamous alumni are 11 former Latin American dictators including: Argentina's Leopoldo Galtieri, Rios Montt of Guatemala and Raoul Cédras of Haiti.
Other notorious graduates include: El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson who killed and tortured thousands during El Salvador's civil war.
As it stands six countries have withdrawn their troops from the school; they are Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Ecuador.
But decades on from the Cold War, the school's influence is still being felt today: four of its graduates helped orchestrate the 2009 coup in Honduras.
Understanding such consequences requires little stretch of the imagination when considering what attendees were being taught
Training manuals that were used were declassified in 1996. They advocated the use of fear, payments of bounties for enemy dead, extortion, beatings and false imprisonment, as well as the use of truth serum.
The term "neutralisation" was also used - which the US department of defence has admitted is a euphemism for illegal execution.
Tremendous article. It's an important one to keep.
For anyone who doesn't know, the man mentioned as "El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson" was also known as "Blowtorch Bob" due to his fondness for employing fire as a tool in his own torture of El Salvadoran suspected leftists. He was well liked by US right-wing Congressmen, and his son is in the El Salvadoran Congress currently.
[center]
Blowtorch Bob
Blowtorch Bob's son, the Congressman.[/center]
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Why do so many known torturers just get to walk, and even get rewarded,
in the supposed "land of the free, home of the brave"?
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)All the power seems to have gone to the dark side.
Oh, I could be wrong.......
I'm not wrong!
In time the monsters will fall. I am certain.
In the meantime, it's barbaric. They should have placed so deeply inside prison they would never see the light of day again.