Emilio Massera, Leader of Brutal Argentine Junta, Dies at 85

Source: New York Times

Emilio Massera, Leader of Brutal Argentine Junta, Dies at 85
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO, The New York Times

BUENOS AIRES -- Emilio Massera, a leader of the military junta of Argentina's bloody dictatorship and the former head of the country's most notorious political prison, where an estimated 5,000 people were tortured and killed, died here on Monday. He was 85. His death, at a naval hospital, was caused by a cerebral hemorrhage, an army spokesman said. Mr. Massera had been mostly bedridden since 2002, when he had a stroke. He had been treated for a heart condition and dementia for years.

Mr. Massera, along with Jorge Videla and Orlando Agosti, formed the military junta that, on March 24, 1976, ousted President Isabel Perón, widow of Juan Domingo Perón, the founder of the country's populist movement.

Known by some historians as the "grand orator" of the dictatorship for his captivating rhetoric, Mr. Massera operated the Naval Mechanics School, a clandestine prison known as ESMA where thousands of political prisoners were tortured over the six years of the regime, which collapsed in 1983.

Mr. Massera was "the most sinister character in our history because he was a serial assassin, without exaggeration," Osvaldo Bayer, an Argentine historian, said in a radio interview. "He took advantage of his uniform for power and money."


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10314/1102119-82.stm

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Mothers of the Plaza protesting the murders of their children by
the right-wing, Kissinger-assisted military torture-happy dictatorship.

Or free as a Bush?

pardoned his ass, and all the others during the time he drove Argentina into the ditch.

Later in the article it says:

A federal court convicted him in 1985 of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison. Then, in 1990, President Carlos Menem granted him and other coup leaders amnesty in what Mr. Menem called a gesture of reconciliation.

~snip~
After Mr. Massera was convicted of dozens of counts of murder, torture and robbery, he was unrepentant. "Nobody has to defend himself for having won a fair war," Mr. Massera said after the trial. "The war against subversive terrorism was fair."

Despite Mr. Menem's pardon, Mr. Massera was arrested in 1998 on charges of having stolen babies born to political prisoners, a crime not covered by the amnesty. His ill health kept him out of prison.

In 2005, the Supreme Court, under the administration of President Néstor Kirchner (who died on Oct. 27), declared the amnesties unconstitutional. But the court, confirming Mr. Massera's dementia, suspended all cases against him, as well as extradition requests from Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Those countries had sought him for the killings of their citizens during the dictatorship.

If it hadn't been for the man who just died last week, leftist President Nestor Kirchner, who was imprisoned and tortured by these depraved people, Argentina wouldn't have started the procedure of taking so many monsters to court and giving them the trials justice demands.

I'm sure you've noticed, too, that all the sleazy fascist vampires insist their health is just way too bad for them to be brought to justice, remember the pathetic killer/Nixon-backed Chilean General Augosto Pinochet who even moved to England to make sure no one could nab him, although he finally was brought home, anyway.

That's interesting. I was trying to figure out why Jose Rodriguez (CIA tape destruction) was an "embassy attache" in Argentina '94-96. That would explain it in part. Thanks.

http://www.thegully.com.nyud.net:8090/essays/argentina/imgs-ar/menem_carlos.jpg

Former Argentine President Carlos Menem in the
hot seat, June 6, 2001 in Buenos Aires.
Daniel Luna

Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking
by Ana Simo

~snip~
1988, a few months before Menem was elected for his first term, George W. Bush, the then oilman son of a sitting U.S. President, had tried to pressure the administration of outgoing President Raúl Alfonsín to favor Enron, the Houston-based company, over other, more qualified bidders to build a gas pipeline in Argentina. He was unsuccessful, but the Bushes hit it off with the high-rolling, big-spending Menem from the start. One of Menem's first acts as President was to give Enron a $300-million sweetheart deal on the pipeline project.

The Enron deal triggered a public outcry in Argentina. A congressional inquiry was demanded, and a special prosecutor launched a probe. But after Menem fired him, the probe fizzled. Enron and its founder and CEO, Kenneth Lay, another close friend of the elder Bush, were among the biggest contributors to George W. Bush's presidential campaign, as well as to his two gubernatorial campaigns.

George W. Bush's brother, Neil Bush, also had his fingers in the Argentina pie. He jetted to Buenos Aires for a tennis match with Menem the day after the latter was first elected, in 1989. Earlier, Neil had been involved in a failed plan to drill oil in Argentina, to be financed in part with a $900,000 loan from the Silverado Savings and Loan Bank in Denver, of which he was a director. The S&L collapsed in 1988 amidst a financial scandal, costing U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion.

The elder Bush soon became an assiduous guest of the flamboyant Menem. He was the first U.S. President since Eisenhower to visit Argentina. Over the years, he clocked eight visits to Menem, for what the Buenos Aires daily Página 12 described as "lavish golf parties." Money and politics were discussed, particularly the three Bush investment areas of choice, according to the newspaper Clarín: oil, gas, and casinos.

More:
http://www.thegully.com/essays/argentina/010607bush_menem.html

Here he is with Mrs. Menem, going about bidness with _{George H. W. Bush,} one year, and then showing off his new wife, Cecilia Bolocco, a former CNN Espanol employee, turned Miss World.



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She dumped him, what a sad, sad situation. :eyes:

I'd love to see it happen in their lifetimes, but Cheney's diseased black heart probably won't allow him to hang in there to see justice.

They raised a good idea though. Find one of the many crimes the Project for a New American Century gang of traitors engaged in that is not covered in the "We have to look forward" blanket pardon Obama issued. There must be some supporting criminal activities that came out indirectly or directly as a result of their main crimes. Something impossible to overlook. Keep looking.....

And I bet Emilio Massera prayed right before his last breath that there was no hell. I wonder if some of the souls he tortured and murdered are keeping his soul company right now.

one can only hope

The general’s limo parked at the corner of San Diego street
and his bodyguards escorted him to the bookstore
called La Oportunidad, so he could browse
for rare works of history.

There were no bloody fingerprints left on the pages.
No books turned to ash at his touch.
He did not track the soil of mass graves on his shoes,
nor did his eyes glow red with a demon’s heat.

Worse: His hands were scrubbed, and his eyes were blue,
and the dementia that raged in his head like a demon,
making the general’s trial impossible, had disappeared.

Desaparecido: like thousands dead but not dead,
as the crowd reminded the general,
gathered outside the bookstore to jeer
when he scurried away with his bodyguards,
so much smaller in person.

--Martin Espada

Now he and pinochet are awaiting kissinger to join them in the everlasting fires...

Emilio Massera; Argentine coup leader
Published on 16 Nov 2010

Born October 19, 1925; Died November 8, 2010.


Emilio Eduardo Massera, who has died aged 85, was a former admiral and member of the military junta that toppled Argentina’s President, Isabel Peron, in 1976. Since suffering a stroke in 2002, Massera was considered too ill and senile to be prosecuted for stealing the babies of jailed dissidents and other crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

~snip~
Images of Massera showing him to be ageing and infirm in recent years were sharply at odds with the coldly calculating Admiral Zero who led the extermination campaign during the dictatorship’s early years. His atrocities were brought to light through the testimony of hundreds of survivors during the historic trial of junta leaders in 1985, when he was sentenced to life for murder, illegal imprisonment, tortures and robbery.

Under Massera’s authority, the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires became Argentina’s main clandestine torture centre. About 5000 people were held in its cells; fewer than half survived. Later, when dictatorship figures were charged with stealing babies, Massera’s ill health kept him out of prison – until he was photographed walking briskly down the street one day. Outraged, a judge sent him back behind bars for a time.

~snip~
According to survivors, the methods of his torturers included electric shocks; simulated executions; the “dry submarine”, in which the kidnapped would be nearly asphyxiated with a bag; and the “wet submarine”, in which prisoners would be submerged headfirst in water. Once they had no more information to give, many prisoners were shot or drugged and dropped from planes into the Atlantic.

More:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/obituaries/emilio-massera-argentine-coup-leader-1.1068735



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