Argentines face trial for Condor deaths

[Judi Lynn]

Argentines face trial for Condor deaths
June 3, 2010 - 7:09AM
AFP

Six Argentine ex-military officials are facing trial after being accused of human rights abuses and the deaths of 65 people under a secret plan by several South American dictatorships in the 1970s.

Observers hope the trial will finally shed light on the shadowy Operation Condor to repress dissidents across the region.

And they are hoping to unlock the secrets of the infamous Automotores Orletti torture centre in Buenos Aires, one of several clandestine prisons used by the military dictatorship.

"This trial is even more important since the clandestine centre was used by intelligence services of other Latin American countries, and people from those countries were detained there," said human rights lawyer Rodolfo Yanzon, who is representing the plaintiffs.

~snip~
Operation Condor was a co-ordinated repression by right-wing South American dictatorships in the 1970s against left-wing activists that was carried out with US assistance. The countries that participated included Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay.

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/argentines-face-trial-for-condor-deaths-20100603-x06t.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Kissinger's 1976 Cable Sheds More Light on 'Operation Condor'

Kissinger's 1976 Cable Sheds More Light on 'Operation Condor'
1 month ago

On the morning of Sept. 21, 1976, former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and two young colleagues drove to work in the scenic Washington neighborhood known as Embassy Row. As Letelier's Chevrolet Chevelle passed the residency of the Chilean ambassador and rounded Sheridan Circle, a bomb placed under the driver's seat by agents of the Chilean secret police detonated. Letelier, a vocal critic of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, died at the scene. His 26-year-old colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, bled to death from a shard of metal that struck her jugular vein. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, was blown out the back window of the vehicle and survived.

Now, a newly declassified cable from then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sheds more light on the action, and lack of action, taken by the U.S. government in the days leading up to that act of international terrorism in the capital city of the United States.

Five days before the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Kissinger called off a planned warning to Pinochet and other South American military leaders against orchestrating "a series of international murders" of their opponents around the globe.

The secretary "has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter," stated a September 16, 1976 cable sent from Africa, where Kissinger was traveling, to his Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, Harry Shlaudeman back in Washington. Using identical language, Shlaudeman passed on these instructions four days later to his deputy to be transmitted to U.S. ambassadors in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

That communication was obtained by The National Security Archive, a public interest research center specializing in the Freedom of Information Act and declassified documentation on U.S. foreign policy. The document and others previously obtained under the FOIA by the Archive have reopened a 34-year-old controversy about what Kissinger's office and the CIA knew about "Operation Condor" -- a clandestine rendition and assassination program among the Latin American military regimes led by Pinochet's Chile.
The Kissinger communique, for the first time, ties the former secretary of state to a decision to withdraw a warning to Chile and its co-conspirators against international political assassination. But the documents offer few clues that would explain why Kissinger called off diplomatic pressure that, if delivered in a timely fashion, might have deterred the Washington, D.C., car bombing.

More:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/10/kissingers-1976-cable-reopens-controversy-over-operation-condo/