Argentina charges Operation Condor suspect

Page last updated at 20:12 GMT, Monday, 10 May 2010 21:12 UK

Argentina charges Operation Condor suspect

A former secret service agent in Argentina has been arrested on charges of human rights abuses under military rule between 1976 and 1983.

Miguel Angel Furci was charged with taking part in around 70 kidnappings.

He is also accused of torturing prisoners at a notorious detention centre in Buenos Aires.

The prison allegedly housed victims of Condor, a joint operation among South American military dictatorships aimed at suppressing the opposition.

At a court hearing, Mr Furci admitted belonging to the secret service and confirmed the existence of the secret detention centre.


More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8673870.stm

(Wikipedia)

Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, Portuguese: Operação Condor), was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing governments of the Southern Cone of South America. The program aimed to eradicate alleged socialist and communist influence and ideas and to control active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments.<1> Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. The death toll is set at least over sixty thousand,<2> possibly more.<3><4><5> Condor's key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The United States participated in a supervisory capacity, with Ecuador and Peru joining later in more peripheral roles.<6>

History
On 25 November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor.<7> However, cooperation between various security services, in the aim of "eliminating Marxist subversion", previously existed before this meeting and Pinochet's coup d'état. Thus, during the Xth Conference of American Armies held in Caracas on September 3, 1973, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various services in order to "struggle against subversion".<8> Furthermore, in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police and co-founder of the Triple A death squad, to implement cooperation guidelines in order to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence of thousands of political exilees in Argentina.<8> In August 1974 the corpses of the first victims of Condor, Bolivian refugees, were found in garbage dumps in Buenos Aires.<8>

According to French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, author of Escadrons de la mort, l'école française (2004, Death Squads, The French School), the paternity of Operation Condor is to be attributed to General Rivero, intelligence officer of the Argentine Armed Forces and former student of the French.<9>

Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the Cold War, had the tacit approval of the United States. In 1968, U.S. General Robert W. Porter stated that "In order to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are...endeavoring to foster inter-service and regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of common operating procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises." Condor was one of the fruits of this effort. The targets were officially armed groups (such as the MIR, the Montoneros or the ERP, the Tupamaros, etc.) but in fact included all kinds of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the Valech Commission. The Argentine "Dirty War", for example, which resulted in approximatively 30,000 victims according to most estimates, targeted many trade-unionists, relatives of activists, etc.

From 1976 onwards, the Chilean DINA and its Argentine counterpart, SIDE, were its front-line troops. The infamous "death flights", theorized in Argentina by Luis María Mendía — and also used during the Algerian War (1954–1962) by French forces — were widely used, in order to make the corpses, and therefore evidence, disappear. There were also many cases of child abduction.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

Lot of other stuff shows up. We used to discuss this during the old CNN US/Cuba forum.

It's really so awful that there are so called democratic supporters who support the current activities of their cretinous cohorts in Cuba - the US supported "dissidents".


:hi:

we all contributed. There's a GOLDMINE in them thar archives.

So much information poured in, so much research posted for those who wished to study it. It was truly a crash course with so many normal, sane people contributing and sharing and discussing. The fact we had a horde of trolls trying to butt in and pitch fits didn't slow it down a bit.

I remember learning the terrorist level gusanos were also involved in some single-minded anti-commie international group and they traveled all over the world running down "commies." They went everywhere. It sounded like a whole lot of dangerous fools on a murderous wild goose chase.

Here's a good snipe I just spotted in a quick grab from google:

Dec 12 2007, 07:25 PM
On 11th December, 1959, Colonel J. C. King, chief of CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, sent a confidential memorandum to Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. King argued that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."

As a result of this memorandum Dulles established Operation 40. It obtained this name because originally there were 40 agents involved in the operation. Later this was expanded to 70 agents. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon. Tracy Barnes became operating officer of what was also called the Cuban Task Force. The first meeting chaired by Barnes took place in his office on 18th January, 1960, and was attended by David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Jack Esterline, and Frank Bender.

On 4th March, 1960, La Coubre, a ship flying a Belgian flag, exploded in Havana Bay. It was loaded with arms and ammunition that had been sent to help defend Cuba's revolution from its enemies. The explosion killed 75 people and over 200 were injured. Fabian Escalante, an officer of the Department of State Security (G-2), later claimed that this was the first successful act carried out by Operation 40.

Operation 40 was not only involved in sabotage operations. In fact, it evolved into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time."

Over the next few years Operation 40 worked closely with several anti-Castro Cuban organizations including Alpha 66. CIA officials and freelance agents such as William Harvey, Thomas Clines, Porter Goss, Gerry Hemming, E. Howard Hunt, David Morales, Carl E. Jenkins, Bernard L. Barker, Barry Seal, Frank Sturgis, Tosh Plumlee, and William C. Bishop also joined the project.

Cuban figures used by Operation 40 included Antonio Veciana, Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, Rafael Quintero, Roland Masferrer, Eladio del Valle, Guillermo Novo, Rafael Villaverde, Carlos Bringuier, Eugenio Martinez, Antonio Cuesta, Hermino Diaz Garcia, Barry Seal, Felix Rodriguez, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Juan Manuel Salvat, Isidro Borjas, Virgilio Paz, Jose Dionisio Suarez, Felipe Rivero, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, Nazario Sargent, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Jose Basulto, and Paulino Sierra.

More:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=11825

You could easily eat up an entire day trying to run these things down in a search. Most people can't afford to spend that much time.

If only we knew a way to get access to the CNN archives and get our stuff back for future use! Bev Burns was the champion researcher, I remember. What talent. We could clean up with Bev Burns in the group, couldn't we?

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Argentina ex-secret agent arrested on 'Dirty War' abuse charges
Jaclyn Belczyk at 9:25 AM ET

Argentine authorities on Monday arrested former secret service agent Miguel Angel Furci on charges of human rights abuses committed during the nation's 1976-83 "Dirty War" . Furci, a former agent of the Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE), was charged with 70 kidnappings and the torture of detainees at a secret Buenos Aires facility known as Automotores Orletti. The detentions were part of "Operation Condor" , a campaign by the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay to round up left-wing dissidents. At a hearing Monday, Furci admitted to serving in the SIDE and acknowledged the existence of the secret prison. Furci has already served a seven-year sentence for a 1976 kidnapping. His trial is scheduled to start on June 3.

Argentina continues to prosecute those accused of committing human rights abuses during the Dirty War. Last week, the Spanish government extradited pilot Julio Alberto Poch to Argentina to face trial for his alleged role. Poch was a navy officer at Argentina's Naval Mechanics School , one of the most notorious detention centers of the military dictatorship, and is believed to have piloted flights known as "death flights," which were used to dump the military junta's political opponents into the Plata River and the Atlantic Ocean. Also last week, former Argentine military junta leader Jorge Rafael Videla was charged with an additional 49 counts of murder, kidnapping, and torture for crimes allegedly committed during Argentina's Dirty War. Last month, a federal court in Argentina sentenced former president and military general Reynaldo Bignone to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses during his 1982 to 1983 presidency. During the Dirty War, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people were forcibly kidnapped or "disappeared" in a government-sponsored campaign against suspected dissidents.

http://jurist.org/paperchase/2010/05/argentina-ex-secret-agent-arrested-on-dirty-war-abuse-charges.php