Beautiful Horizons

Why the Debate?

"She had blood gushing out of her mouth, blood all over . . . As I ran closer I could see a foot in the roadway . . . I could observe that apparently the vehicle had skidded across some 50 or 75 feet, leaving debris in the roadway, including the foot. I got closer to the vehicle. I looked into the car, and immediately saw a white male sitting there on his buttocks, on the pavement. The whole floor panel of the car was gone. He was missing his legs somewhere above the knees. There was blood everyplace. The inside of the vehicle was all blackened and charred."

This is an account by a detective who came upon the scene shortly after a car bombing. So, where did it take place? Lebanon? Iraq? Northern Ireland?

Try Washington, DC September 21, 1976.

Here's a view of what remained of Orlando Letelier's car:

Here's a look at the front seat:

While there is no proof that he was directly involved in this act, Luis Posada Carriles was at the meeting where it was planned and he did nothing to stop it.

Why then, is there any debate about granting this monstrous terrorist political asylum in the United States? Why is he even in this country? Send him to Venezuela. F#$% him.

Finally Fessing Up

I have often speculated that what would finally shed a great deal of light on just how great the level of Augusto Pinochet's involvement in the atrocities committed by his regime would be if one of his subordinates finally fessed up if they got fed up enough with their former CO's denials and refusal to accept responsibility. Well, it has finally happened and the subordinate is one of the more significant ones with strong ties to Pinochet:

Chile's former secret service chief has provided courts with a document that claims to list the whereabouts of hundreds of people who disappeared during the 17-year rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, casting blame for their killings away from himself and directly toward the former Chilean military chief.

Lawyers for retired Gen. Manuel Contreras submitted to Chile's Supreme Court on Friday a 32-page document that lists about 580 people -- almost half the number still considered "disappeared" -- and purportedly reveals exactly what was done with the bodies. Human rights groups immediately questioned the information and its source, citing Contreras's years of deception and denials of responsibility for human rights abuses.

I certainly agree with that last sentence. What has consistently motivated Contreras has not been a guilty conscience or a sense of repentance, but simple garden variety ass-covering. I would not put it past him in this case.

It has, however, beggared belief that given the Prussian-trained, chain of command tradition in Chile's military, that subordinates would be engaged in crimes against humanity that were rogue operations. This comes as no surprise to me:

Contreras alleged that Pinochet personally ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean foreign minister who was killed in a car-bombing in Washington in 1976 along with Ronni Moffitt, an American co-worker. He wrote that Pinochet also ordered the killing of former general Carlos Prats in Argentina in 1974. Contreras was previously jailed for his role in Letelier's death, and he is currently in prison for the 1975 killing of activist Miguel Angel Sandoval.

One of the prosecutors in the Letelier case made this comment when Pinochet was  being investigated by Spanish authorites (leading to his arrest in London):

When former US Attorney Lawrence Barcella testified before Judge García Castellón earlier this year, he explained what the Justice Department investigation had learned about Pinochet's daily meetings with Colonel Contreras and the kind of "explicit orders" Pinochet gave. "I laid out my 'avenging angel's scenario,'" Barcella recalled. "Either angels were killing off his opponents year after year, or Pinochet was well aware that his secret police arm was out there directing the annual assassination of his enemies." It was "inconceivable," said Barcella, "that Pinochet did not know."

Contreras's allegations should be investigated thoroughly, and certainly not accepted on their face. Some of what he is claiming may be true. A broken clock is right twice a day. A sociopathic terrorist criminal against humanity could be right about a few things as well, even if he is trying to cover his ass and is facing fifteen years in jail at the age of 75.

The Impunity Express Gets Derailed Again

This is encouraging:

Vittorio Orvieto Teplinzky, who lives in Miami-Dade, was arrested in Chile for allegedly participating in the torture of political prisoners as an army doctor during the dictatorship of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, U.S. officials and rights activists said Friday.

Whereas this is disturbing:

U.S. officials said Orvieto, 65, has lived in South Florida since the late 1990s, when he arrived using an Egyptian passport. Orvieto became a permanent resident, said one official who requested anonymity.

[...]

Orvieto's name has appeared in several human rights reports on Chile over the years, but his connection to Miami-Dade was not known previously.

He was not a target of a 5-year-old U.S. program to detect and deport foreign torture suspects. [my emphasis]

I wonder why . . .

In any event, it is excellent news that he was arrested in Chile as it is continues to show that the continued impunity enjoyed by  alleged major players in the human rights abuses that occured under the Pinochet regime is still being stripped away. One of the activities that Orvieto is being accused of: treating torture victims so that they did not die and could continue to be tortured.

First do no harm , indeed.

Augie Skates on Prats Case

(I was reading Variety today which explains the funky title.)  The Chilean Supreme Court voted to overturn a lower court decision and allow Augusto Pinochet to retain his immunity as a former president in the murder of his predecessor as commander of the Army, General Carlos Prats. Prats and his wife were killed by a car bomb in September 1974 in Buenos Aires where they had gone in exile.

This is a particularly venal crime along with the Letelier-Moffitt murders and the attempted assassination of Bernardo Leighton. The investigation in Argentina has pointed squarely to DINA, Pinochet's secret police, and among those who have admitted involvement is Michael Townley, who turned state's evidence in the Letelier-Moffitt case and who has also claimed that Manuel Contreras ordered the assassination of Prats. Contreras was the head of DINA, and in that role regularly breakfasted with Pinochet.

Of course it's always good to be the king or ex-king in this case. Not everyone can have their ex-boss blown to bits and have immunity from prosecution.

Paul Schaefer Captured at Last

No, not that Paul Schaefer, but the Paul Schaefer who was the leader of the cult known as Colonia Dignidad has been arrested in Argentina. Schaefer, a former Nazi, was the "Supreme Leader" at Colonia Dignidad and was convicted in absentia for sexually abusing 26 minors.

Part of Colonia Dignidad's sordid past is related to allegations that the enclave served as a torture center during the Pinochet dictatorship. It has also been alleged that the close ties of Schaefer and company with the Pinochet regime had shielded it from criminal charges and close examination.

If this is indeed the case and with the only bargaining power Schaefer may have is what Pinochet's thugs may have done there, then the choice for Schaefer is an obvious one:  cante como un pájaro.

Pinochet's Last Act?

The Chilean Supreme Court has ruled 3-2 that a trial of Augusto Pinochet may go forward. There is another appeal that needs to be addressed:

Still pending, however, is a separate appeal based on the general's mental fitness. His lawyers have argued that he suffers from age-related dementia and can't properly defend himself. The court hasn't said when it will rule on that specific issue.

There are other charges pending against Pinochet as the article notes, so it appears likely that the general and accused criminal against humanity will, if nothing else, spend his remaining years fighting lawsuits and criminal charges.

Meanwhile, some of his colleagues are also facing charges related to Operation Condor. Maybe some of them will roll on the general. One can hope that they are sufficiently fed up with his illicit enrichment that they will do just that.

No Pass For the General Out of His Labyrinth

The Santiago Appeals Court ruled unanimously against an injunction to prevent the trial of  Augusto Pinochet:

"The injunction was rejected by three votes to zero, that means unanimously," Juan Escobar, one of the three judges on the appeals court, told reporters.

The only previous time a human rights case against Pinochet reached this stage in Chile's courts, the appeals court threw out the charges with a 2001 ruling that his mild dementia made him too ill to stand trial.

The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2002.

"Today's ruling has set an important example for those countries once involved in Operation Condor," said William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

Finally time for justice to move forward? I'm sure that the Supreme Court will have its say as Pinochet's side has appealed to it, but right now the signs are trending toward a trial. In addition to the issue of Pinochet's illicit enrichment, as the article notes, the release of the torture victims' testimony (which even shocked Pinochet's daughter) has been another reason for Pinochet's declining support. It seems like the general has exhausted all of his tricks. Better late than never.

File Under Convenient

Augusto Pinochet is back in the hospital today after having suffered a stroke. Of course it's not the first time when the heat has risen that he's gotten sick.  I saw his lawyer on CNN International stating that his critics always comment that he's okay. The lawyer said, "I wish they could see him now."

Bueno, but if that is the case and he is claiming that he really is too sick to assist in his defense, then I would suggest that as his attorney tell his client but one word: callarse!

In a bad couple of days for brutal, former Southern Cone dictators, Jorge Videla, the particularly nasty Argentinian General also had a stroke yesterday. I wish both of them speedy and complete recoveries. Videla is also facing charges and I would hate to see either one beat the rap via a dirt nap. If they should pass away, however, the doctors will need this tool before they are buried.

Mendacity, Thy Name is Kissinger

Via Marc Cooper, I was directed to this article in The Nation by Scott Sherman which covers the contretemps that sprang up when Henry Kissinger took exception to the review that Kenneth Maxwell, a noted and highly regarded scholar on Latin America, wrote of Peter Kornbluh's The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability for Foreign Policy magazine. I posted about this here and here, but Sherman's article points me an intriguing analysis by Maxwell of the whole affair.

Maxwell is now a Senior Fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He has just published a paper available at the DRCLAS website as a pdf file titled The Case of the Missing Letter in Foreign Affairs: Kissinger, Pinochet and Operation Condor which covers this incident. It's worth the download and the time to read it and I urge you to do so. Kissinger is as mendacious and vindictive as he has always been and his powerful friends and supporters in high places have no qualms about throwing their weight around in order to protect him - at the expense of the truth.

The question remains then, if  Dr. Kissinger is so terribly concerned about the truth, why doesn't he just release all of his "private" papers from when he was National Security Adviser and Secretary of State? Why should the National Security Archive have to spend so much time and effort filing Freedom of Information Act requests to get this information if Kissinger has nothing to hide?

The Pinochet Indictment

To absolutely no one's surprise I am indescribably happy about the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, although I have my doubts as to how far the process of pursuing justice against him will go. Nevertheless, if anyone asked me five years ago if I ever thought he would be tried in Chile, the answer would have been an unqualified no. I believed that Pinochet had succeeded in insuring that he would never have to answer for anything in Chile. He had his cousin and then Justice Minister, Monica Madariaga write an amnesty for him and his cohorts. He also had a new constitution created which would provide for the newly minted position of senator-for-life for anyone who had served as president for six years. With this role as senator came parliamentary immunity.

Yet Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998 and this was the pivotal moment that lead to the possible trial of Pinochet in Chile.  Why, because the most consistent argument of the Chileans that opposed Pinochet, but also opposed his extradition to Spain, was that Pinochet could be tried in Chile. There were many, many skeptics, myself included. I believed the Chilean government had painted itself into a corner and as I watched the general rise up out of his wheelchair in March 2000, cured miraculously of the many ills that had "minded" Jack Straw, then the British Home Secretary to send Pinochet back to Chile, I was convinced that Pinochet had beaten the rap.

I was not yet aware of this man:

This is Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, an investigative judge in Chile. Among his other accomplishments, Judge Guzmán has successfully argued that disappearances were ongoing kidnappings since no remains had been found and as an ongoing crime, it was exempt from Pinochet's self-amnesty of 1978. This has been the linchpin that has enabled the prosecution of Pinochet to get this far.

What is compelling about the current indictment and why everyone who opposes terrorism should be enthusiastic about it is that it focuses on actions that are related to Operation Condor, which was the establishment of a terrorist network among several South American military dictatorships and the development of which was pionerred by Pinochet and his right-hand man, and convicted terrorist, Manuel Contreras. One of the results of Operation Condor was the assassination in Washington, DC on September 21, 1976 of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean exile and fierce Pinochet opponent and his American assistant, Ronni Moffit, a 25-year-old newlywed. In addition, as writer John Dinges, who has written the definitive book on Operation Condor, there is compelling evidence that an Operation Condor scheme included a plan to assassinate then US Congressman Ed Koch for opposing military aid to Uruguay's dictatorship. Unless  one thinks that murdering people via car bomb in our nation's capital or international conspiracies to kill US legislators is acceptable, this is the image you should hope to see of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte someday:

This Miami Herald editorial in today's paper sets the right tone:

If Gen. Pinochet truly is a ''good angel'' who saved the country from leftist chaos, which is how he portrayed himself in a Spanish-language interview with a Miami TV station last year, he should be happy to have the truth revealed in a court of law. This interview, in which Gen. Pinochet appeared to be in control of his faculties, helped persuade Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia that the general is mentally competent to stand trial.

What is most important is that the evidence be tested in a court of law -- and let the chips fall where they may. Go through the process that establishes the truth or falsity of the charges in a fair and open judicial proceeding. As things now stand, given two previous exculpatory rulings, there is every appearance that Gen. Pinochet has unfairly managed to duck the charges and is above the law, answerable to no one for his actions.

Not incidentally, the trial could have a salutary effect on other Latin American countries. As Operation Condor makes clear, Chile wasn't the only place where government leaders resorted to extra-legal means to deal with guerrillas and political opponents. If the people of Chile are strong enough to demand to know what crimes were committed in their name, and by whom, the people of Argentina, Mexico and other countries whose leaders have tried to sweep the past under the rug also can demand to know the truth.

What decent, freedom-loving person can take issue with that?