Ex-Spy Chief Goes on Trial on Rights Charges

[Judi Lynn]

August 18, 2005

IN BRIEF / PERU
Ex-Spy Chief Goes on Trial on Rights Charges
From Times Wire Reports

Peru began its first trial against former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos for human rights crimes, accusing him of ordering massacres of suspected leftist rebels in the early 1990s.

Montesinos faces a possible sentence of 35 years if found guilty of leading the Grupo Colina death squad, which is blamed for kidnapping, torturing and shooting victims during the military's campaign to root out Shining Path guerrillas.

Montesinos has been jailed since 2001.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs18.1aug18,1,6168647.story?coll=la-headlines-world

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The documents posted today were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests made by journalist Jeremy Bigwood, who earlier this year donated them to the Archive. These documents shed some light on Montesinos’ involvement in human rights violations and corruption scandals, but also demonstrate the amount of information being currently withheld on this subject by the U.S. government. According to Peter Kornbluh, who analyzes Latin America at the Archive, the Clinton Administration "could, and should, make a major contribution to the truth of Montesinos’s career, as well as to the future of Peruvian democracy, by expeditiously declassifying the U.S. holdings on Montesinos." Kornbluh said that U.S. agencies have vast amounts of secret documentation that would serve as essential evidence in any proceedings against Montesinos for human rights abuses and graft. The Archive, which has led campaigns to declassify secret U.S. documents on Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America, said it would press for full disclosure of hundreds of U.S. records on Montesinos, including CIA documents on covert relations with President Fujimori's disgraced intelligence chieftain. The Archive is set to file dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests on Montesinos and his ties to the United States.
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http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB37/

[wli]

1. we need to do similar here for various neocon thugs n/t