New law would allow U.S. to deport alleged torturers

Posted on Sat, Dec. 18, 2004

HUMAN RIGHTS

New law would allow U.S. to deport alleged torturers

A new provision may make it easier for federal authorities to deport foreign-born torture suspects, including a former Chilean military officer and two former Salvadoran generals.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@herald.com


Cárlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and José Guillermo García -- suspected of human-rights violations in El Salvador -- are lawful permanent residents of the United States, living in Florida.They resettled here after retiring as top leaders in the Salvadoran military.

Federal agents who track foreign-born human-rights violators have not moved against them because neither has broken immigration laws. But a new law that President Bush signed Friday could subject them to deportation proceedings.

A provision in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 empowers federal authorities to act against foreign-born residents or citizens on the basis of human rights violations committed in their home country.Without that change, federal agents have had to rely on immigration-law violations to deport suspected human-rights abusers.

''The new law will make it possible to go after these two ex-generals -- and others -- we have not been able to touch before,'' a Bush administration official said.

CHILEAN SUSPECTED

He said agents also are interested in taking action against at least one other suspect: Armando Fernández Larios of Chile, who lives in Kendall.Fernández Larios, a former military officer under Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, has been implicated in the car-bomb assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., in 1976. Last year, a Miami federal jury found him liable for the death of an anti-Pinochet activist in Chile in 1973.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/10444884.htm
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This is the first time I have EVER seen one of the Chilean victems of Pinochet referred to as an "anti-Pinochet activist." If you've read articles on Chile you remember they have ALWAYS referred to them as "leftists," or "suspected leftists," or union organizers, educators, clergymen, women, etc.

So now the Miami Herald is personalizing this by claiming they were "anti-Pinochet." They were ALSO anti-US right-wing protestors, as well, since we were mucking around in their internal affairs, and overthrowing their democratically chosen government.

torture memos?

One of them is now a law professor in Minnesota.

Another is now a law professor at UC Berkeley in California.

And Alberto Gonzalez is about to become US Attorney General.

It seems like the Bush administration would want to make use of their special skills.