i'd no sooner put up the last post than i ran across this...An attorney for a victim of Uruguay's 1973-1985 dictatorship has asked his government to request the extradition of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger over his alleged role in the notorious Operation Condor.
Condor was a secret plan hatched by South American dictators in the 1970s to eliminate leftist political opponents in the region. Details of the plan have emerged over the past years in documents and court testimony.
operation condor was the group behind many of the ugly, murderous dictatorships that have plagued latin america in the last 30-40 years, including argentina, bolivia, brazil, chile, paraguay, and uruguay...Operation Condor ... was a campaign of state terrorism and intelligence operations implemented by right-wing dictatorships that dominated the Southern Cone in Latin America from the 1950s to 1980s, heavily relying on numerous assassinations. The systematic counter-terrorism aimed both to deter democratic influence and ideas disseminated in the region and to control active or potential opposition movements against these governments. This organized counter-terrorism caused an unknown number of deaths, due to the covering up of the different governments involved. According to the "terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered, 30,000 "disappeared" (desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.[1][2]. There have recently been some attempts of prosecutions against those responsible for this repression, to varied degrees.
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The operation was jointly conducted by the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the mid-1970s.
Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the Cold War, was given at least tacit approval by the United States which feared a Marxist revolution in the region. The targets were officially leftist guerrillas, but in fact included all kinds of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the Valech Commission. The "Dirty War" in Argentina for example, which resulted in 30,000 victims, targeted mostly trade-unionists. Chilean MIR members, activists of the Catholic left-wing Peronist group the Montoneros, members of the Argentine MTO (the "All for the Country Movement") or Uruguayan Tupamaros were among those targeted.
It appears that Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of the Condor plan.
henry is a cold-blooded bastard and richly deserves to face the music for his long years of getting away scot-free... maybe, just maybe, we're going to see some accountability... it'd be nice of the u.s. would get on the bandwagon as well... too much going on in the u.s. with the current crop of home-grown evildoers, i guess...Labels: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, Latin America, Operation Condor, Paraguay, Richard Nixon, United States, Uruguay
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