Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalKlaus Barbie, the Nazi "Butcher of Lyon" and his association with Bolivia's Hugo Banzer.
This is information I just stumbled across, and want to share with DU'ers I respect. It comes from an investigation by Democratic Congresswoman Elizabeth Holzman and Joshua Eilberg:
RECRUITING NAZIS
GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATIONS. Numerous allegations about collaborating with the German Nazis -- during and after World War II -- have been leveled at the CIA.
~snip~
Fifth, the CIA evacuated Nazi war criminals and collaborators through "rat lines" in southern Europe, allowing them to escape justice by relocating them in South America.
~snip~
Seventh, the CIA covered up its these activities from congressional and other federal investigators.
The congressional investigations were launched by Congressmen Joshua Eilberg and Elizabeth Holtzman. After the INS's investigation appeared to be at a standstill. Congress demanded that the GAO determine whether the INS or any other government agency had conspired to obstruct legal action against alleged Nazi war criminals living in the United States. Congress made this request in January 1977, marking the beginning of the first GAO investigation. The Special Litigation Unit, a new office within INS and the immediate predecessor to the OSI, also started its separate investigation at the same time. (www.cia.gov/csi/studies/97unclass/naziwar)
~snip~
KLAUS BARBIE: THE BUTCHER OF LYON." The greatest asset to American security forces was Nazi officer Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon." He worked his way up the Gestapo ladder during World War II. After the German occupation of France in 1942, Hitler named him commander of the SS office in Lyons in 1942 where he ordered the murder of 4,000 Jews. After the war concluded, Barbie was charged with war crimes at Nurenberg. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, formerly a Wall Street attorney, intervened in the executions of some convicted Nurenberg criminals. He arranged to have Barbie sheltered from prosecution by the 970th Counterintelligence Corps at Oberamergau. McCloy's motives were clear. He represented Standard Oil and Chase Manhatten Bank which were big investors in Nazi Germany. Before the war, McCloy was the legal adviser to I.G. Farben, the German chemical conglomerate, many of whose officials were elevated to high positions by Hitler. The company also prospered from Jewish slave labor at Auswitz and other concentration camps.
Barbie was quickly picked up by the CIC and put on their payroll. According to Klaus' CIA file which was declassified on April 27, 2001, his job was to keep track of communists. The CIC protected him from French prosecution. A 1967 American Army document, declassified on April 27, 2001, said, "Exposure of Counterintelligence Command's role in evacuating him from Germany to avoid prosecution would have serious consequences for the U.S. government."
~snip~
By the early 1960s, the CIA recruited Bolivian General Rene Barrientos Ortuno who, in turn, launched an attack on the presidential palace in 1964. Paz fled the country, and the CIA placed General Rene Barrientos Ortuno in power. The American government sent in troops to assure control as well as bringing 1,600 military officers back to the United States for training. This group included the top 23 Bolivian Army generals. The French continued their hunt for Barbie, but the United States government denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. Barrientos placed Barbie on his Department 4, his internal security force, and Barbie was put in charge of planning counterinsurgency operations. When Bolivian tin miners walked out and struck again, Barbie quickly responded by using Nazi techniques of interrogation, torture, and murder. Over 100 miners were killed by Department 4 troopers. Barbie extended his terrorist tactics when he launched an attack against Bolivian Indian tribes whom he considered genetically and culturally inferior.
~snip~
In 1969, Barrientos ironically was killed when his Gulf Oil helicopter crashed, and he was succeeded by General Ovando Candia and after one year by General Juan Jose Torres. However, Torres turned out to be a populist and exiled Cuban refugee Che Guevara and nationalizing foreign multinational corporations which included Gulf Oil. Therefore, the CIA had to strike once again. In a 1970 coup, Torres was overthrown and was replaced with Hugo Banzer Suarez who had been trained at the School of the Americas in Panama. Immediately, Bolivia's universities were shut down and violent methods were carried out against leftist resistors.
In 1970, Hugo Banzer Suarez seized power, and Barbie stayed on to run his security division. In addition, Barbie continued to pocket millions of dollars from his drug enterprise and well as from his lucrative arms business. While Suarez oversaw a fast growing billion dollar drug trade, former Nazi Hugo Banzer and two top Army generals were actively involved in the trade. By the early 1970s, Bolivia controlled 80 percent of the world's coca fields, and most was exported to Colombian cartel laboratories including Barbie's Transmaritania.
More:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book14Ch.3.html
(Some of you may recall our excellent DU friend "rabs", who lived and studied and worked all over South America for many years, who has close and extended family living there still, and maintains contact with them all, and with friends there, had a LOT of information about this subject when he used to post here. He knew a great deal about them.
He is completely rare, wildly more informed than any poster on this subject I have ever known.)
More:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book14Ch.3.html
[center]~~~~~[/center]
In pursuit of Bolivia's secret Nazi
After the second world war many high-ranking Nazis fled to South America. Among them was the head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyon, a man responsible for the deportation of Jews to the death camp at Auschwitz and the torture of members of the French Resistance. Hiding in Bolivia, Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, changed his name to Klaus Altmann and made himself helpful to drug lords and dictators alike. Bolivian journalist Gustavo Sanchez explains what happened when he tracked Barbie down in 1983
Weekly, Wednesday 10 September 2008 04.00 EDT
[font size=1]
German SS officer and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.
Photograph: Gabriel Hackett/Getty[/font]
For decades here in Bolivia we had an infamous tradition of ruthless dictators. In the early 70s General Hugo Banzer siezed power. He turned to the ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie to help him with the repression. It was not the first time that Barbie, a war criminal wanted by the French and German authorities, had mingled with hardliners. Here in Bolivia he used to do big business with the drug lords. He had his own team of assassins, some from Italy and others from Argentina, called the Grooms of Death. He also sold them weapons.
American intelligence officials helped Barbie to become established in Bolivia as part of their crusade against communism. He acted as a sort of counter-intelligence official. Under the alias of Klaus Altmann he worked primarily as an interrogator and torturer. He also helped in the same way in Peru. He did the same things here as in Germany and France. For him the word communist meant "dead". Many Bolivians died during that dictatorship; one that was prolonged for more than 10 years. Barbie was in charge of the murders of many Bolivian citizens, including priests and members of the opposition.
So some of us felt that we had to do something about it. But in 1980, after General Banzer, an even bloodier dictator, Luis García Meza, rose to power in what was called the narco, or cocaine, coup. Barbie was a key aide then. He was the main ideologue of that coup; he organised absolutely everything. He was even given the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian armed forces, and was then able to move around with total impunity. Today Bolivians know all about Barbie, but for a long time many even doubted that such a criminal could be here.
I was kind of obsessed with Barbie since the beginning. In the 70s, when I was in Chile with the Marxist Régis Debray and the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, we masterminded a plan to kidnap Barbie. But we failed. Back then I was a simple leftist journalist, who was on very bad terms with the dictators' regimes – I knew that if I stayed I would be killed. I was in Chile until General Pinochet took over, then in Argentina until the junta took over, and finally in Cuba, until Bolivia's return to democracy in 1982 under Hernán Siles Suazo.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/10/bolivia-germany
[center]~~~~~[/center]
There's so much to learn if and when you might decide to launch your own search on this absolute monster, and right-wing mass murderer, Klaus Barbie, and his connection to the right-wing goblins in the US-assisted reigns of terror in Bolivia.
Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .
Source: Colombia Reports
Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .
Monday, 19 November 2012 09:30 Caitlin Trent
Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe admitted Sunday to receiving "help" from U.S. coal company Drummond while in office.
Although direct payments from Drummond to Uribe's lawyer remain unconfirmed, in an interview Sunday with news broadcast Noticias Uno ex-president Uribe admitted to accepting unspecified "help" from the American coal giant.
The murky ties between Uribe and Drummond came to light two years ago when Uribe was subpoenaed as a witness to Drummond's alleged paramilitary ties with paramilitary organization AUC.
The ex-president however received immunity from testifying last year while being defended by prominent lawyer Gregory Craig whose legal fees are speculated to be paid for by Drummond.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/27068-uribe-receiving-help-from-drummond.html
Drummond paid to kill unionists: Ex-paramilitary .
Wednesday, 14 March 2012 14:00 Mary Cecelia Bittner
A former paramilitary has testified before a U.S. court that coal giant Drummond Ltd. paid paramilitaries $1.5 million to murder union leaders, Colombian media reported Tuesday.
Alcides Mattos Tabares, alias "El Samario," claimed that as part of the Northern Bloc of the AUC he took part in the murdering of employees ordered by Drummond.
Drummond's union president and vice president, Valmore Locarno and Victor Hugo Orcasita, "had" to be killed because they were organizing a strike that would have generated losses for the company, said Tabares.
From 2002 until his 2005 capture, Tabares patrolled Drummond’s railway lines, where he participated in killings, sometimes directed by Drummond employees, he claimed. He spoke of the trade unionists' murder saying,"I was not exactly the shooter, but I participated in the event as [paramilitay commander] 'Tolemaida's' security chief."
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22827-drummond-paid-to-kill-unionists-ex-paramilitary.html
[center]
[/center]
Google using 3-wheeled bike to add panoramic views of Mayan ruins to ‘Street View’ feature
Google using 3-wheeled bike to add panoramic views of Mayan ruins to ‘Street View’ feature
By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, August 16, 5:23 PM
MEXICO CITY — Google is adding interactive images of dozens of pre-Hispanic ruins to the “Street View” feature on its Google Maps website.
Google Mexico and Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History announced Thursday that 30 sites have been added to Street View, and dozens more will be coming online this year. The eventual goal is 90 sites.
The feature allows users to click on map locations to obtain 360-degree, interactive images composed of millions of photos taken at street level by specially equipped vehicles. Google uses a special, three-wheeled bicycle to generate images of the Mexican sites, many of which don’t have paved areas.
The sites already online include Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan and Monte Alban.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/google-using-3-wheeled-bike-to-add-panoramic-views-of-mayan-ruins-to-street-view-feature/2012/08/16/ffa45c7a-e7f0-11e1-9739-eef99c5fb285_story.html
(Short article, no more at link.)
[center]
Chichen Itza
Teotihuacan
Monte Alban[/center]
Hoping whoever sees the google photos will post them A.S.A.P.! Should be wonderful.
Article in Colombia's newspaper, El Tiempo, re: former para's court testimony:
Murder Training: Colombian Death Squad Used Live Hostages
April 29, 2007 By El Tiempo
El Tiempo, Bogota -- "Proof of courage": that is how the how the paramilitaries would term the training they imparted to their recruits so that they learnt how to carve up people while they were still alive.
Initially, the authorities rejected this version of the farmers who reported the practice... but when the combatants themselves started to admit to it in their testimonies before the prosecutors, the myth became a harsh crime against humanity.
Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández (alias Cristian Barreto), one of the perpetrators of the massacre at El Aro in Ituango, Antioquia, received this type of training in the same place where he learnt to handle arms and manufacture home-made bombs. Today, a prisoner at La Picota in Bogota, Villalba has described in details during lengthy testimonies how he applied the learning.
"Towards the middle of 1994, I was ordered to a course... in El Tomate, Antioquia, where the training camp was located," he says in his testimony. There, his working day started at 5 in the morning and the instructions were received directly from the top commanders such as 'Double Zero' (Carlos Garcia, since assassinated by another paramilitary group).
Villalba claims that in order to learn how to dismember people they would use farmers they gathered together in the course of taking neighbouring settlements. As he describes it, "they were aged people whom we brought in trucks, alive and bound up". The victims arrived at the ranch in covered trucks. They were lowered from the vehicle with their hands tied and taken to a room. There they were locked up for days in the hope that the training would start.
More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/murder-training-colombian-death-squad-used-live-hostages-by-el-tiempo
[center]
Former AUC, Francisco Enrique Villalba.[/center]
Material from a testimony by this man, Francisco Villaba, former death squad member. He was murdered not too long ago, after he had testified in court regarding his participation in AUC (right-wing paramillitary) activities:
Details of testimony that involves Uribe in a massacre
Posted on June 20, 2008 by csn
http://colombiasupport.net/2008/06/details-of-testimony-that-involves-uribe-in-a-massacre
(Very, very graphic. Horrendous.)
Paramilitaries said 1997 massacre was 'well coordinated' with army: US cable . (Colombia)
Source: Colombia Reports
Paramilitaries said 1997 massacre was 'well coordinated' with army: US cable .
Wednesday, 18 July 2012 09:31 Adriaan Alsema
Members of paramilitary organization AUC told the U.S. embassy that the 1997 Mapiripan massacre in central Colombia was "well coordinated in advance" with (elements of) the army, according to a released diplomatic cable.
The State Department document was declassified and published Tuesday by the National Security Archive, a non-profit organization dedicated to declassifying U.S. government documents.
According to the embassy's anonymous sources, the army provided "travel, logistics, intelligence and security" to the paramilitary who killed dozens of civilians in the five days after their July 15 incursion of the town.
~snip~
The identification of the victims has been complicated as the paramilitaries cut up the majority of their remains and threw them in a nearby river.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/25133-paramilitaries-said-1997-massacre-was-well-coordinated-with-army-us-cable.html
Uribe conspired with paramilitaries: AUC commander .
Source: Colombia Reports
Uribe conspired with paramilitaries: AUC commander . (U.S. ally)
Wednesday, 11 July 2012 11:11 Esteban Manriquez
One of the paramilitary AUC's most prominent ex-commanders accused Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe of collaborating with armed militias.
Ever Veloza, alias “H.H.,” told U.S. prosecutors that Uribe developed ties with the paramilitary group AUC during his tenure as governor of the Antioquia department from 1995-1997. According to H.H., Carlos Castaño, one of the founders of the AUC, used pagers to keep in contact with officials in the Antioquian government. Uribe used one of these pagers to secretly communicate with Castaño, said the extradited commander.
~snip~
Uribe is one of hundreds of politicians implicated in what's called "parapolitics."
Since 2006, 38 congressmen and five governors have been convicted for conspiring with paramilitary groups to get elected into office, reap financial rewards and intimidate opponents. Some 140 more former congressmen have pending investigations against them. Although many of these “parapoliticians” were allies of the Uribe administration, the former president himself has so far escaped indictment. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, more than 11,000 politicians, public officials, members of the military and businessmen collaborated with the organization that was determined a terrorist organization until its official demobilization between 2003 and 2006.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/25032-uribe-conspired-with-paramilitary-auc-commander.html
(Colombia's paramilitaries, which officially ended, have regrouped under different names, as noted by groups like Amnesty International. They have always been identified as right-wing narcotrafficking death squads responsible for "the lion's share" of extreme violence against citizens in Colombia.)
There was a clear difference between the position taken by Carter and Clinton on Guatemala vs Reagan
Very quick example, using the example from this article:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html
Jennifer Harbury vs. the US government
In 1995, US policy toward Guatemala was driven by the unprecedented public attention to the plight of US citizen Jennifer Harbury, the wife of disappeared guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca. In 1992, Bamaca was captured and murdered. His wife, American attorney Jennifer Harbury, waged an impassioned campaign to find her husband and bring his killers to justice. Her hunger strikes first in Guatemala City and then in front of the White House, touched a chord among Americans. Representative Robert Toricelli of the House Intelligence Committee revealed that both Michael DeVine and Efrain Bamaca had been executed on the orders of Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, who had been on the CIA payroll for years, and had been trained at the School of the Americas.
Harbury's struggle against the lies, intimidation, and cover-up mounted by the Guatemalan authorities brought to US public attention a reality all too familiar to Guatemalans. In addition, her pressure for answers from the US government prompted the unraveling of a series of revelations about the CIA's secret assistance to abusive military institutions and officers in Guatemala. The scandal revealed a secret policy that for many years had made all but irrelevant Washington's public postures on human rights in Guatemala. In the cascade of revelations, it became clear the CIA had secretly provided millions of dollars in assistance to Guatemala's G-2 unit, even after the US government cut-off of overt military aid and sales in 1990.
In March 1995, the Clinton Administration, as a result of Jennifer Harbury's hunger strike in front of the White House, suspended military training for Guatemalan Army officers. Shortly thereafter, Clinton ordered most of the CIA's assistance to the Guatemalan military suspended, except for anti-narcotics funding. The Intelligence Oversight Board (it had never before been convened) was convened at the end of 1995, but its report was a whitewash, concluding that "No evidence has been found that any employee of the CIA in any way directed, participated in or condoned the murder of Michael DeVine." Perhaps, Alpirez was not considered an "employee" even though he was on the CIA payroll. It seems certain that there will be a similar finding in the Bamaca execution as well.
Several millions of dollars in military aid cut off in 1990 by the Bush administration, was channeled by Clinton into a peace fund to support the work of the MINUGUA human rights verification mission.
[center]
[font size=1]Jennifer Harbury and Carol DeVine, the widows of Efrain Velasquez and Michael DeVine
respectively, testify in Congress about the CIA's involvement in the murders of their husbands.[/font]
THE CIA IN GUATEMALA: THE LESSER KNOWN HOLOCAUST
"We have no scorched earth policy. We have a scorched Communist policy."
Guatemalan President RIOS MONTT
"The military guys who do this are like serial killers. If Jeffrey Dahmer
had been in Guatemala, he would be a general by now."
- CLYDE SNOW, forensic anthropologist
[/center]
Compared to the struggles against state tyranny in other Central American countries, very little is heard of Guatemala in the Western media. This is because the level of repression is extremely high; Guatemala has suffered the worst record of human rights abuses in Latin America. During three decades, hundreds of thousands of people have been massacred during their struggle against a government that has been armed and trained by the U.S.
~snip~
Anyone attempting to organise a union or simply suspected of being in support of the resistance was a target. Armed men broke into their homes and dragged them away. The abducted were tortured, mutilated or burned; their bodies were found buried in mass graves or floating in plastic bags in lakes or rivers, or lying beside the road. Bodies were dropped into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gualan area, it was said, no one fished any more because too many corpses were caught in the nets. In Guatemala City, right wing terrorists machine-gunned people and houses in daylight. Journalists, lawyers, students, teachers, trade unionists, members of opposition parties, anyone who helped or expressed sympathy for the rebel cause, anyone with a vaguely leftist political association or a moderate criticism of government policy and relatives of the victims were all targets for attack.
"It is hard to find the words to express the state of putrefaction that exists in
Guatemala, and the permanent terror in which the inhabitants live. Every day
bodies are pulled out of the Motagua River, riddled with bullets and partially
eaten by fish. Every day men are kidnapped right in the street by unidentified
people in cars, armed to the teeth, with no intervention by the police patrols."
- from the notebook of MICHELE KIRK, a young French woman who shot
herself in Guatemala City as the police came to her room to make "inquiries."
The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) contributed to a programme to greatly expand the size of Guatemala's national police force and to develop it into a professional body skilled at counteracting urban disorder. Additionally, the police force was completely supplied with radio patrol cars and a radio communications network and funds to build a national police academy and pay for salaries, uniforms, weapons and equipment.
More:
http://www.american-buddha.com/cia.guatemala.htm
Completely missing in school text books is the amazing choice given to the citizens
by Rios Montt in his bizarre "guns and beans" initiative. What a mighty man of God, you bet.
Important background on this ally of the US right-wing:
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about General Efrain Rios Montt is his brother. In May 1998 Bishop Mario Rios Montt succeeded the assassinated Bishop Juan Gerardi as head of the Catholic Church's human-rights office in Guatemala. His task is to continue Gerardi's work, uncovering the truth behind the massacre or disappearance of upwards of 200,000 people during the prolonged and continuing 'civil war'- more accurately described as attempted genocide - against the indigenous Mayan majority of the Guatemalan population. The person who, in the early 19805, presided over the most vicious single episode in this genocide was none other than the Bishop's brother, the General. Efrain is also an ordained minister of the authoritarian, right-wing Gospel Outreach/Verbo evangelical church, based in California and one of several such churches that have been expanding fast
in the region, at the expense of the Catholic Church. General Rios Montt's evangelical zeal is linked to the military 'education' he received - like many of his peers in Latin America - from the School of the r Americas, run by the US military in Panama. From the 19505 onwards this notorious 'Coup School' taught its students how to contribute to US interests and the anti-Communist effort by usurping political power in Latin America by any available means, including assassination, torture and 'disappearance'. After a US-orchestrated military coup in 1954, Guatemala became a key component of US 'counter-insurgency' activity throughout Central America. So when Rios Montt grew to maturity and duly seized power in 1982 he set out to show what a good student he had been. He launched a 'Guns and Beans' offensive against Guatemala's persistent insurgents. A subsequent report commissioned by the UN found that at least 448 mostly Indian villages had been simply wiped off the map. The targeting of the Mayan peoples forced hundreds of thousands to flee to the mountains or to neighboring Mexico. Many of those who remained were corralled into 'hamlets' to produce cash crops for export.
According to Amnesty International, in just four months there were more than 2,000 fully documented extrajudicial killings by the Guatemalan army: 'People of all ages were not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disembowelled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death.' The Catholic bishops said: 'Never in our national history has it come to such extremes.' US President Ronald Reagan, visiting Guatemala on a swing through Latin America, hailed Rios Montt as 'totally dedicated to democracy'.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Efrain_Rios_Montt.html
[center]~ ~ ~ ~ ~[/center]
Reagan and Rios Montt
The 1980s was marked by barbaric repression and the massacre of the indigenous population. A succession of elected dictators, supported by the US, left suffering in their wake. Because of the notoriety that again developed from reports of human rights violations by the Guatemalan Army, President Reagan changed the US policy of overt aid to the Guatemalan Army to a two- track policy. While government spokespersons made public pronouncements in support of human rights and the return to civilian rule, the Reagan Administration signaled to the Guatemalan Army its approval for winning the war, and it lobbied Congress for more aid. The CIA continued to work with Guatemala's security forces.
General Efrain Rios Montt, a graduate of the School of the Americas (SOA), at Fort Benning, Georgia, came to power in a 1982 coup. Praised as a "born-again" Christian reformer, in truth he was one of the most savage of Guatemalan dictators. His "Beans and Rifles" program was designed to keep guerrillas out of Indian villages -- beans for those who cooperated, rifles for those who didn't. He declared a "state of siege", and on television, he stated that he had "declared a state of siege so that we could kill legally". He banned public meetings, suspended the constitution, replaced elected officials, and censored the press. He also instituted Civil Defense Patrols (PACs) to control the population.
Rios Montt moved the war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As Guatemalans suffered torture, kidnappings, and massacres at the hands of the government, he presented himself as the savior of the population. Using the lessons he had learned at the SOA, he implemented a "pacification" program similar to that used by the US in Vietnam, intended to give the impression that the government wanted to reestablish democracy in the country. In reality, as the "pacification" program moved from village to village, it essentially established concentration camps bpopulated by those who had been able to survive the massacres and political genocide which the government itself carried out.
During the 17 months of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign, 400 villages were destroyed, 10 - 20,000 Indians were killed, and over 100,000 fled to Mexico. Early in 1983, President Reagan resumed military shipments to Guatemala, claiming that Montt's program against the guerrilla insurgency was working. He said that Montt was given a "bum rap" on human rights.
More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html
What a "thrill" it was to learn Illinois (R) Rep. Jerry Weller married Zury Rios-Montt,
renewing bonds between US right-wingers and the blood-thirsty, racist right of Guatemala.
Just as morally disoriented Ronald Reagan, fundie flim-flam artist preachers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell embraced the genocidal, bogus fundie preacher/butchering dictator and his henchmen, so has Republican Congressman Weller embraced his right-wing daughter, Guatemalan Congresswoman Zury Rios-Montt.
Wikipedia
?Zury Mayté Ríos Sosa de Weller (born January 1968) is a Guatemalan politician, affiliated with the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) political party. She is currently serving her fourth term in Congress, where she serves as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. She has also served on the Steering Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and was the Chair of the IPU's Latin American Group where she was elected unanimously by parliamentarians from the Latin American nations.
Zury Ríos was re-elected for a fourth congressional term (2008–12) in the 9 September 2007 general election.
She is the daughter of former military dictator and FRG founder Efraín Ríos Montt, the leader of the three-man junta that came to power by military coup in 1982. As one of his staunch supporters she is a controversial figure both at home and abroad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zury_R%C3%ADos_Montt
Jerry Weller's Wikipedia:
In July 2004, Weller announced that he was engaged to three-term Guatemalan Congresswoman Zury Ríos Montt, daughter of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.[17] On November 20, 2004, the two married at her father's home in Antigua Guatemala, his second marriage and her fourth. (Zury Ríos has also used the combined parental surname Ríos Sosa, but in Guatemala she is nowadays best known by her father's name, Ríos Montt; her personal website uses the hybrid married form "Ríos-Montt de Weller". [7])http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Weller
In August 2006, a daughter, Marizú Catherine, was born in a hospital in Guatemala City.[18][19]
[edit] Properties in Nicaragua
On October 25, 2006, the Chicago Reader reported that Weller had disclosed three parcels of land he owned in Nicaragua on his financial disclosure forms: one purchased in 2002, one purchased in April 2004, and one purchased in December 2005. The newspaper also reported that it had obtained notarized bills of sale for three more lots owned by Weller that had never been listed on his forms: a lot sold in February 2005, a lot purchased in March 2005, and lot purchased in April 2005. The failure to properly disclosure property ownership is a violation of the Ethics in Government Act and the False Statements Accountability Act of 1996.
Weller's lawyer said that he couldn’t comment because of the attorney-client privilege.[20] Weller's campaign manager said Weller "does not own three more parcels in Nicaragua. He does not own six parcels in Nicaragua. He has filed his disclosure for everything that he owns."[21]
On September 7, 2007, the Chicago Tribune disclosed the results of their own investigation into his land deals, including discrepancies on declared prices and numbers of transactions, centered in the Playa Coco resort area. For example, Weller listed only one Nicaraguan property purchase on his 2005 disclosure form, but property records in Nicaragua showed that he bought or sold at least eight pieces of land.[22]
[center]
Father of the blushing bride, genocidal dictator Efrain Rios-Montt
Rios-Montt's legacy, survivors of a massacre carrying
remains of their loved ones from mass grave for re-burial.[center]
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