14 ex-officials of Chilean dictator Pinochet face French trial in absentia over disappearances

Source: Associated Press

14 ex-officials of Chilean dictator Pinochet face French trial in absentia over disappearances
By PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD , Associated Press
Last update: December 8, 2010 - 10:28 AM

PARIS - A French court put 14 former Chilean officials on trial in absentia Wednesday over the disappearance of French citizens under the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The 14, mostly former high-ranking military officials, face charges including kidnapping and torture and are the subject of international arrest warrants. They face up to life in prison, if convicted.

While the defendants did not appear in court Wednesday, families of the victims hope the trial offers some justice more than 30 years after the four Frenchmen disappeared — and four years after Pinochet himself died following failed efforts in Chile and abroad to prosecute him for human rights abuses.

The 14 are being tried in connection with the disappearances of the four men between 1973 and 1975. Among the disappeared was Georges Klein, the doctor of Marxist President Salvador Allende, whom Pinochet toppled on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody coup.



Read more: http://www.startribune.com/world/111527499.html

December 2010 Last updated at 08:17 ET
Pinochet officials tried in absentia in France

Fourteen officials who served under the military rule of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile are being tried in absentia in a French court.

The charges, which include kidnapping and torture, relate to the disappearance of four French citizens soon after Gen Pinochet came to power.

The 14 accused were mostly senior military officers at the time and include Manuel Contreras, the former head of the Dina secret police.

A verdict is expected later this month.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11948079

~~~~~
Pinochet, Augusto
Chilean dictator from 1973 to 1990

Recognized as one of the most ruthless and violent strongmen in the history of Latin America, General Augusto Pinochet's name became synonymous with human rights atrocities during the last quarter of the twentieth century. During his seventeen-year military regime in Chile, his security forces were responsible for the murders of 3,197 Chilean citizens. Of those, 1,100 were "disappeared"—abused to death and buried in still-secret graves, or thrown from military helicopters into the Pacific Ocean. An estimated 30,000 Chileans survived imprisonment and severe torture by agents of Pinochet's secret police—electric shock, beatings, near-drowning, and rape in secret detention facilities. In the mid-1970s, the Pinochet regime also organized a network of secret police agencies (given the code name Operation Condor) that coordinated the repression of groups and individuals who had been identified as opponents of the military governments of the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Condor's methods included secret surveillance, kidnapping, interrogation, torture, and terrorist attacks. International efforts to hold General Pinochet legally accountable for human rights atrocities in Chile and acts of terrorism abroad led to his arrest for crimes against humanity in London in 1998.

~snip~
During his seventeen-year rule Chile became a pariah state, internationally condemned for ongoing, systematic violations of human rights. Pinochet played a leadership role in initiating and overseeing many of these atrocities. One month after the coup, he authorized a death squad, led by his close associate General Sergio Arellano, to "expedite justice" in relation to civic leaders of the former Allende government—police chiefs, mayors, local union officials—who had been arrested in the northern provinces after the coup. Using a Puma helicopter, a five-member military team led by General Arellano flew to various northern cities and, at each stop, selected prisoners and shot or bayoneted them in the middle of the night. Over a period of four days, sixty-eight civilians were killed, having committed no crime other than serving in local community leadership roles under the elected Allende government. This series of atrocities became known as "the Caravan of Death."

Members of the caravan team were subsequently integrated into a new secret police force known as the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA). Pinochet handpicked Colonel Manuel Contreras, a close friend of his in the Chilean military with no background in intelligence, to be director of DINA. United States intelligence reports described Contreras as a "strong character, with intense loyalty to President Pinochet. . . . e will advance only with the personal support of President Pinochet" (Kornbluh, 2003, pp. 160–161). Between 1974 and 1977 DINA expanded into a massive, institutionalized force of repression in Chile, terrorizing Chilean society at every level. DINA agents conducted clandestine raids and arrests; it forced prisoners through a network of clandestine interrogation centers to extract information from them. Many DINA prisoners were tortured to death and then "disappeared." The U.S. military reported from Santiago that DINA was "becoming a modern day Gestapo" (Kornbluh, 2003, p. 160). One informant announced to U.S. officials, "There are three sources of power in Chile: Pinochet, God, and DINA" (Kornbluh, 2003, p. 153).

DINA served as the central pillar of Pinochet's power. It actively eliminated all leftist opposition to his regime in Chile, and Contreras assigned agents to spy on other military commanders and intimidate anyone who challenged Pinochet's authority. Through executive decrees Pinochet bestowed on DINA the authority to establish a virtual monopoly over repression in Chile. Officially, DINA fell under the jurisdiction of the military junta. In reality, Contreras reported only to—and only took orders from—General Pinochet. Contreras met with Pinochet every morning, at 7:30 AM, to brief him on DINA operations. United States intelligence agents reported: "The President issues instructions on DINA; is aware of its activities; and, in fact, heads it" (Kornbluh, 2003, p. 166).

More:
http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/pinochet-augusto

http://farm3.static.flickr.com.nyud.net:8090/2468/3912248497_4e0d072293.jpg

Nixon's Sec. of State, Henry Kissinger, and Augusto Pinochet.

http://www.esacademic.com.nyud.net:8090/pictures/eswiki/77/Manuel_mamo_contreras.PNG http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_3IOAVXZLuXs/SmHxKaTzkvI/AAAAAAAAJF8/AtfeWAbqKkA/s320/MANUEL_CONTRERAS.jpg

Pinochet's head hell dispenser, Manuel Contreras

http://www.remember-chile.org.uk.nyud.net:8090/images/contrpin.jpg

Contreras, and Pinochet, together in old age.

http://ruderico.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2010/11/file_200774111010.jpg http://www.zonaimpacto.cl.nyud.net:8090/fotos/207/osvaldo_romo.jpg

Contreras' "famous" torturer, Osvaldo Romo
Please take a moment to review this earlier post:

Political repression in Chile: the actual deeds.

~snip~
Political repression in Chile: the actual deeds.
Translation of opening of chapter II from María Eugenia Rojas, La represión politica en Chile: los hechos. Madrid (IEPALA Editorial) 1988, as posted on Michael Neumann's excellent Pinochet web site. The following is a matter-of-fact description of various tortures applied during specific phases of the Pinochet regime, as described by survivors. Illustrations from the book were scanned by M. Neumann and originally posted at his web site. Link to drawings 1 2 3 4 5I will expand this page as I continue the translation. --Lisa Grayson

TORTURE.

As applied to those who were detained after the military coup, torture had three fundamental objectives. First, to get information quickly, with the objective of making other arrests and uncovering supposedly subversive activities of leftist political parties. Second, to break the prisoner's resistance, thus removing him from the political scene and leaving him unable to join in partisan or opposition activism. And last, to punish the prisoner in revenge for his ideological or party affiliation. By these means the services of the military intelligence division of the Armed Forces were used nonstop during the first months after the coup. Some of those involved proved to have been trained in the application of torture, probably in the School of the Americas, USARSA, based in the Panama Canal zone or in other locations, or by people from Brazil or Uruguay, countries that were also ruled by brutal military dictatorships.

Methods of torture described in the preliminary reports from COPAHI (" Comité de Cooperación para la Paz en Chile"), the Cooperative Committee for Peace in Chile (September 11th ­ end of October, 1973) are as follows:

Physical tortures:

• Application of electrical current in various parts of the body, usually the gums, genitals and anus. See drawing.
  
• Blows.
  
• Blindfolding or hoods.
  
• Burning with acids or cigarettes.
  
• Immersion in gasoline or water.
  
• Whipping.
  
• Incarceration in unhealthy conditions or with vermin.
  
• Being forced to participate in or witness sexual activities <62>.
  
• Being rolled over rocks.
  
• Being forced to witness torture.
  
• Ingestion of excrement.
  
• Rack.
  
• Hanging by the neck.
  
• Deprivation of water for a week.
  
• Deliberate fracture of a wounded arm.
  
• Being thrown from a height blindfolded.
  
• Knives inserted under fingernails or toenails.
  
• Cutting on the hands.
  
• Being exposed naked to the sun.
  
• Not identified (caused death).

More:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3375882#3376969

Thank you, Judi Lynn. Bookmarked, kicked, recommended, downloaded and tossed onto the back-up drive.

Ian Smith, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and the Ayatollah--and that's just for 1980-88

meanwhile, they kept harping on how George Bernard Shaw got tricked by Stalin into praising him, drawing strictly on Orwell's jaundiced (and SOCIALIST) eye

this sort of "doublethink" (and there are many sorts of it, good and extraordinarily bad) is how they can justify calling Obama a Commie as he moves to the right of Robert Taft: in fact, it's the same think-tank-written Regnery et al. who relentlessly fabricate their books, which spend 6-24 months in the bookstores and then go right to 5-per-dollar discounts at HumanEvents.com

Let's see the right took over in 1973 if I remember correctly.

Is that 37 years? How old will Cheney and Bush be in 37 years?

Or do they pick and choose dictators?