Pinochet turns 88 amid uproar

[Judi Lynn]

Pinochet turns 88 amid uproar
From correspondents in Santiago, Chile
November 26, 2003

GENERAL Augusto Pinochet turned 88 today amid uproar after saying he felt "like an angel" in a television interview he said would be his last ever.

Speaking with a Spanish-language television station in Miami yesterday, Pinochet said he saw no reason to ask forgiveness from victims or their relatives for human rights violations during his 1973-1990 dictatorship.

"They are the ones, the Marxists, who should ask me for forgiveness," the ailing general said in the interview, recalling a 1986 attempt on his life in which five of his bodyguards were killed.

(snip) Excerpts of the interview with Canal 22 WLDP were published here and immediately sparked anger from government officials and opponents of Pinochet's authoritarian rule that left more than 3100 people dead or missing. (snip/...)

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7982972%255E1702,00.html


Kissinger, left, Pinochet, right

[gratuitous]

1. Satan's waitin', Augusto

Keeping the seat next to Franco open for you.

[Lisa]

2. well, well ...

Mr. "I'm too fragile for a trial, take me home before I die in prison" seems to be in pretty good shape, no?

[meow2u3]

3. Only the good die young

nt

[DrWeird]

4. OK, I'll say it- that's a stupid fucking headline.

"He's 89," shouted one angry protestor, "he's 616 in dog years," retorted another.

[TXvote]

5. Smells Like Death

Why is it the most heinous people to walk the earth NEVER show remorse? Guess it's required if you are gonna be evil.

I can think of a few in this admin that just don't get the remorse thing either...

All of them goin' straight to hell.

[Say_What]

16. My friend the US has decades of murder, torture, mayhem, and attrocities

spread around the globe. Chili was only one example. In Guatamala at the hands of SOA graduates, 100,000 were murdered, 50,000 were disappeared, 11% of which were CHILDREN--all of this sanctioned by Washington and with the help of the CIA.

This happened around the globe and is still happening--take a look into what the military and their cohorts the paramilitaries (also SOA) are doing in Colombia. 80% of the millions going to Colombia go to the military who in turn trains and advises the paras. Over the last couple of years the paras have been responsible for 70% of the massacres.

Also, I have no doubt that these same dispicable acts are being carried out in the Middle East today. Uncle Sam points around and accuses other countries of human right abuses when in fact we are the worst abuser on the planet. The most heinous reside in Washington.

---

From the SOA protest this past weekend:

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Harbury, the Harvard-trained lawyer, was one of those who spoke.

JENNIFER HARBURY: Hello. I would like to speak today on behalf of my husband, Efrain Bamaca Velazquez or Comandante El Berardo, of Guatemala. Unfortunately, he is not here today to speak for himself because a few years ago, he was captured alive, tortured for two years, held in a full body cast, and then either thrown out of a helicopter or dismembered by between eight and 12 graduates of the School of the Americas.

I wish that I could say that this happened long ago and that we, therefore, don't have to worry about it anymore. But, in fact, it happened during the Clinton administration. I wish that I could say every school has its bad apples and maybe Colonel Alpirez, who personally presided over one of the torture sessions was just a bad apple but between the eight and 12 persons that participated directly in his torture and his eventual execution, most of them were also on C.I.A. payroll as paid informants.

This school is not just a training center; it is where we pick up our death squad partners for the C.I.A. This is where we link, this is where all roads cross on the way to Rome.

I'd like to speak briefly about precisely what did happen to my El Berardo, but only in the sense that his case is symbolic of so many other cases. His case, unfortunately, is not an extraordinary case. It is not a shocking case. Throughout Latin America, it was an everyday occurrence. So, while I speak about what happened to him, I'd like you just to be thinking of the hundreds of thousands, millions, of the same people who suffered the same terror, the same torture, the same miserable deaths and who have unmarked graves also across Latin America. Because when we speak for one, we have to speak for all of them.

El Berardo was a Mayan peasant of Guatemala. He grew up starving to death quite literally. He learned to read and write in the mountains where he fought for 17 years. Ironically, he was captured alive by the Guatemalan army in 1992, the year that marked the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus, something that was not considered cause for celebration by the indigenous population of Guatemala. He was captured, but the army was very careful to carry out an international hoax saying that, in fact, he had not been captured alive, but had killed himself in combat to avoid capture and he was buried in a certain grave marked XX in a nearby town of Retetulello.

In fact, what they have had done is dragged an 18-year-old out of a military base, a young soldier, also a Mayan peasant who had been forcibly recruited. They then placed him in an olive green uniform that matched the URNG forces uniform and tied him by his ankles so tightly with his own socks that it etched a weaving pattern in his skin and kicked him in the skin until his cheekbones collapsed, strangled him, leaving a two-centimeter strangulation around the throat, shot him, stabbed him, and smashed his skull. That is the person that was buried in the grave at Retetulello as we later found out.

Meanwhile, they told all of us that El Berardo had died in combat and was buried in that grave. And, when we asked for the description, we got an identical description of my husband and not the young soldier who was, in fact, dead.

El Berardo was then subjected to nearly two years of torture. We know that he was battered severely. We know that he was injected with drugs again and again. We know that one of the people responsible for his torture sessions was Colonel Julio Roberto Alperez who studied here at the School of the Americas twice, a known C.I.A. asset, a paid informant, who was responsible in 1990 for the murder of U.S. citizen Michael Devine who, according to the C.I.A.'s own files, excelled in the liquidation campaign against the indigenous peoples in the Mayan highlands in the early 1980's, a counterinsurgency campaign that has been labeled genocide by the United Nations Truth Commission. We know that the other persons responsible for his torture were within the intelligence death squad called the Commando, responsible for the liquidation of civilian dissidence as well as insurgents within Guatemala. In other words, another death squad where the leadership of that death squad checked in with Uncle Sam in a high-rise building down the street from the U.S. embassy two to three times a week.

But actual torture session, did someone survive to escape from Guatemala and tell us about, involved having my husband stripped, strapped down to a hospital bed with a doctor standing by to make sure he didn't accidentally die during his torture session, blindfolded him, injected him with a toxic substance that caused him to swell grotesquely and apparently one arm and leg to hemorrhage because they were heavily bandaged and left him raving. We know that he survived that session. I just want to give that as one example of what use our tax dollars are put to by people who graduate from this school and then continue to work as partners with the United States government.

We know that he survived that session and was kept alive for quite a bit longer because C.I.A. files showed that people became very frustrated when they wouldn't tell him the truth and because he was so intelligent he almost managed to escape several times, forcing him to be held until a full body cast.

The files also show there were nearly 300 other prisoners who were alive and under the same horrible conditions that he was under and being clandestinely detained. The C.I.A. knew about all of this within six days of my husband's capture and relayed that information to the Department of State and the U.S. embassy. I wasn't told. Congress wasn't told. In fact, congress was told in writing, including members of the intelligence oversight board for two years that is was no information. During the two years of hunger strikes, campaigns, O.A.S. cases, etc., etc., all 300 of those prisoners were murdered. They were either stuffed down wells, thrown out of helicopters, or beaten to death and buried under the military base.

Like I say, when we speak for one, please remember all of them from Chile northward to our borders, including the people right now that we need to be worrying about in the Middle East. Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Harbury, lawyer and human rights activist. Her husband, Efrain Bamaca Velazquez, was murdered by Salvadorian troops trained at the School of the Americas. Jennifer is a member of the Torture Abolition and Survivor's Support Coalition, speaking this weekend at the mass protest at the School of the Americas where some 30 to 40 people were arrested.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/24/1458247

[Archae]

6. And this SOB is lauded by Ann Coulter.

Yup.
In one of her scrawls, she has nothing but praise for this jerk who had his goons commit terrorism right here in the US.

(The murder of a political rival and critic by car bomb.)

[LibertyorDeath]

8. Ann Coulter there is only one solution for fascists like her.

[LibertyorDeath]

7. Is this piece of human refuse still alive.

Augusto Pinochet I'm sure shrub has something good to say about him
I know Maggie Thatcher does.

Augusto Pinochet Evil personified.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

9. No, he's just resting.

[SharonAnn]

10. I just got back from 3 weeks in Chile. Michael Moore's book,

Stupid White Men, is apparently a big seller there (in Spanish, of course). The bookstores (many of them) had stacks of Moore's book on the same table with stacks of a biography of Salvadore Allende and stacks of an autobiography of Pinochet named "Yo, Pinochet" (I, Pinochet). Interesting juxtaposition, don't you think?

Also, while I was there, the front page news in the newspaper every day was the status of a pedophilia ring investigation where a prominent right-wing businessman has been charged and some other prominent businessmen and right-wing politicos are being investigated. This ring targeted homeless boys, had big pedophilia parties, and made videos of many of the activities.

Pinochet, an Opus Dei member and supporter, is a Catholic much like Torquemada (Spanish Inquisition) was a Catholic.

Having said that, some are Pinochet supporters and some are not. Beats me how people can be brain-washed into supporting evil people.

[Say_What]

18. SF chronicle article about Pinochet's buddies and child porn...

From yesterday's SF Chronicle.

<clips>

...In October, Claudio Spiniak, 55, and six colleagues, were charged with using a luxury gym he owns for sadomasochistic orgies with children. He has also been accused of producing and distributing child pornography.

The scandal has linked two right-wing senators of the Independent Democratic Union party (UDI) to the pedophile ring as well as prominent businessmen and four police officers, who were arrested last week for obstruction of justice. Several politicians have accused opposition parties of using the sordid case for political gain. UDI leaders say it's a smear campaign to weaken their presidential candidate in the 2005 election.

The suspected senators are Carlos Bombal and Jovino Novoa, the ex-mayor of Santiago and former deputy minister of the General Secretariat under former dictator Augusto Pinochet, respectively. Novoa has been accused of raping a 16- year-old girl and hiring her out as a prostitute.

Moreover, Daniel Calvo, a respected judge who had been investigating the alleged link between politicians and the pedophile ring, was removed from the case early this month after revealing that he had been a regular visitor to a gay bathhouse where children were welcome.

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/24/MNG7U38LD81.DTL>

[TXvote]

25. Bravisimo darlin

Chile is quite similar, though far more elegant and rustic, than America. The difference is that America tends to follow the leaders and policies of the day like sheeple on the grassy knoll tended by napping little boys. Chile knows overt fear on the streets. Not since the American Civil war have our homes been invaded by former neighbors in uniform. (Though I do extend a solemn nod to American victims of the ATF, FBI, ASJD, et al.) The thing that I have tried to learn from Pinochet's reign is, while Pinochet led, why did others follow? The answers seem to be as individual as each of us is as a human being. My impression is of a collective nighmare.
And yet, Chile has recovered remarkably well. I am pleased to hear your observations of a society exploring important issues. Thanks for sharing.

Peace,

Teresa
www.votervirgin.com

[Say_What]

28. A collective nightmare and FEAR --brought on by the first days of the coup

when thousands, including Americans Charles Horman and Frank Terruggi, were herded into stadiums, tortured, and then murdered. After that came the Caravan of Death around the entire nation and the torture chambers, which lasted for years. There used to be someone who posted to the CNN US-Cuba relations board whose family members had suffered these atrocities. The description of what happened to her loved ones was horrifying. Meanwhile, the US supported all of it.

Many places of torture, not only Villa Grimaldi and other notorious places that operated for years, but also the tall ship La Esmeralda, which continues to be banned from ports around the world in protest of what happened aboard this vessel.

Ignorant are those of us who think that can't happen here. Patriot Act I and II, the detaining of people on US soil without being charged, and without access to lawyers or family is just the beginning.

---

<clips>

Pinochet's torture ship heads into protest storm

Blair urged to ban training vessel from Britain until Chile admits its use as floating jail after 1973 coup

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Friday June 6, 2003
The Guardian

The Chilean navy's infamous torture ship, the Esmeralda, is to visit Britain twice this summer after the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, refused petitions for it to be banned. Mr Straw acted despite Chile's refusal to admit to or apologise for the vessel's horrific past.

The elegant, four-masted ship, known as "the white lady", will sail into Dartmouth harbour on June 27 despite the protests of the family of a British Roman Catholic priest, Michael Woodward, who died after being tortured on the vessel following General Augusto Pinochet's coup in 1973.

The Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned for the prosecution of Gen Pinochet while the former dictator was detained in Britain five years ago, yesterday tabled an early day motion in parliament saying that the ship should not be welcomed in British waters. "We want to condemn the visit of the Esmeralda because of its past associations with the Chilean navy," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,11993,971563,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

27. Great reading about your trip to Chile

The bookstores' idea of arranging the three books is awfully interesting! I'll bet Michael Moore would get a real kick from that.

The right-wing pedophile scandal? We hear things like this about right-wingers, like the former mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who molested two pre-teen children, the daughter and neice of a hooker, who was involved in a horrendous corruption scandal in addition to that, and we're supposed to simply shut up about it. We'd be hearing about it for decades had some of these people been Democrats.

We probably will be STILL hearing about Clinton that long, as it is, while our lunatic fringe right-wing runs amock.

[0007]

11. I'm absolutely amazed that this man is still alive.

And why isn't Kissinger in prison?

[bluestateguy]

12. Yet people on the Left continue to oppose the death penalty

I say a public hanging for this tyrant.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. No, better

Hold him in a 3m x 3m cage in the middle of a 10m x 10 m room which will be a museum exhibit of his atrocities. So people can look and see what a monster looks like. If he misbehaves, shoot him with a tranquilizer dart.

This is also the answer I give when pro-DP people ask me "what if they had captured Hitler alive?"

[0007]

14. I don't believe in the death penalty, why lower.....

yourself your that standard?

[Say_What]

17. Death for these monsters including RayGun is too good--let 'em live

to a very old age--haunted by the past.

I don't believe that the DP solves anything. Personally, that 3x3 cage surrounded by the photos of the attrocities that someone described in this thread sounds perfect.

[Say_What]

15. Caravan of Death

I saw this documentary "Caravan of Death" a few nights ago on Free Speech TV. After murdering thousands in Santiago, Pinochet sent his henchmen out into other Chilean cities to make sure the military in these outposts weren't "soft" on leftists. This Caravan of Death murdered scores of people--some who had turned themselves in. It has only been since Pinochet left power that the survivors have been allowed to search for the remains of their loved one. The documentary pointed out that Pinochet--the former US darling--is still loved among the oligarchs and I do believe they showed all these POS at a birthday for Kissinger's buddy. Even today Chileans' say that there could be more democracy in Chile. Here's some information about he Caravan of Death. This article says "a few days"--it actually lasted from September 30 to October 22, 1973, according to Memoria y Justicia.

---

For a few days in October 1973, a self-styled military "delegation" toured provincial cities in northern and southern Chile, killing dozens of political opponents of General Augusto Pinochet's September coup.

Many of the victims of what became known as the "Caravan of Death" had voluntarily turned themselves into the military authorities.

Prisoners were taken from their cells and summarily executed, often without the knowledge or consent of the local military authorities.

More than 3,000 opponents died or disappeared during the Pinochet years
At least 72 people were killed and memories of the "caravan" endure as one of the most notorious episodes of human rights abuse during Chile's military rule.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/850932.stm

[Judi Lynn]

19. Rough guys our Kissinger and CIA enlisted as pals

Pinochet decided this officer wasn't nasty enough, as described in your second link:

Army Mayor Fernando Reveco Valenzuela presided over the first War Councils of Calama, until late September 1973. On October 2 he was relieved of his position as tribunal president for handing down sentences considered overly lenient by the high command. Reveco was taken to Santiago where he too was found guilty of "failure to fulfill military duties." He was tortured at the Air Force War Academy in Tacna and imprisoned for 15 months.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That link was the first time I ever heard of "Villa Grimaldi," one of the torture centers. I grabbed a link to an article on torture centers in Chile;

Within Villa Grimaldi there were rooms specifically designed for torture. Some agents applied different methods of torture and others, usually officials, conducted the interrogations. The latter sometimes also personally applied the torture. In some cases, during interrogations with or without torture, another person would take notes with a typewriter.

The most common torture method was electrical shock, consisting of a metal rack to which the naked prisoner was tied and then electrical current would be applied to different parts of his or her body, especially the most sensitive areas such as the lips or genitals or even on wounds or metallic prostheses. One particularly cruel variation of this method consisted in further pressuring the subject of interrogation by placing him on the bottom rack of a double bunkbed and torturing a family member or friend above him.

Another torture method often employed was hanging. The victim was hung from a bar, either by the wrists or by wrists and ankles. In both cases, the pain produced over time by the weight of the hanging body, was aggravated by applying electrical shocks, beatings, penetrating wounds and other types of aggravation.

Submerging the person’s head in a container of water - usually dirty - or some other liquid, was another torture method often used at Villa Grimaldi. The victim’s head would be held under water almost until the point of asphyxiation. A similar effect was obtained through the so-called "dry submarine", which consisted in placing a plastic bag around the person’s head to prevent him or her from breathing.

In addition to these methods, torture and mistreatment by all types of beatings was habitual at Villa Grimaldi. These ranged from extremely violent, producing serious injury, to unexpected blows to blindfolded detainees.

In Villa Grimaldi drugs were used to obtain declarations. For a while, hypnotizing prisoners was tried, but without results.

Villa Grimaldi had specially designed rooms used for torture. Some agents applied the torture methods and others, usually officers, conducted the interrogations, although the officers at times employed the torture instruments themselves. On some occasions during interrogations, with or without torture, another official took notes on a typewriter.

In addition to those methods already described, which were the most common, some agents occasionally employed other techniques. There are testimonies stating that on one occasion, in the case of the Gallardo family... boiling water or other liquid was thrown on various prisoners as a method of punishment and in anticipation of their eventual death.

Villa Grimaldi operated virtually non-stop. The operative teams came and went 24 hours a day, bringing in prisoners and torturing them around the clock. (snip/...)
http://www.lakota.clara.net/derechos/5.htm

"Never a leaf moves in Chile without my knowing of it" — General Pinochet 1975

Also, the Caravan of Death employed dropping victems out of helicopters, an act I can't imagine.

Thanks for the links.

[Say_What]

20. Villa Grimaldi and the SOA...

Kissinger and Pinochet--war criminals who should be in prison.

<clips>

Witnesses to Atrocity

...Luis Santibañez, President of the Parque por la Paz Corporation until 2003, was one of the architects who designed the Parque por la Paz.
Atrocities were committed in Pisagua but in Villa Grimaldi atrocity was the system. It was not that atrocities were sometimes committed. Torture was the daily system within that atrocity. The functionaries who participated at Villa Grimaldi were trained torturers, trained at the School of the Americas. We have discovered that the method of atrocity was neither casual nor the result of rage or madness. What has impressed us most is that they considered it normal and routine. What they were doing was good and they did it for the sake of the country.

Facile explanations arise to produce oblivion, to avoid confronting things. They say, "someone just went too far," or "this was the work of madmen." Or it was the consequence of the climate of convulsion produced by the Popular Unity government. Therefore, those who produced the convulsion are to blame. Those are all easy justifications intended to avoid the truth. The truth is that Villa Grimaldi was not the result of a few excesses or madness. It was a system.

Rodrigo Del Villar was imprisoned at Villa Grimaldi four months, beginning in January 1975.
Villa Grimaldi was a place of experimentation. They started out brutally, and then the guys began to learn how to do their jobs better. Torture was not sophisticated. There is nothing sophisticated about making someone stick his head in a plastic bag. The method was so elementary, that when the United Nations inspectors came, it was easy to conceal what was going on there.

The torturers concealed their own identity as well as the identity of each prisoner. The main thing was that the prisoner was no longer a person. We were all given numbers - mine was 83 - and we were always called by those numbers, never by our names. The intent was to deprive us of our individual personalities. The aim was to transform you into a substance that could be easily managed. I think that was part of the policy behind making people disappear. If you are only a number, it is easier to make you disappear. It was not an individual who disappeared; only a number disappeared. Stripping a person's identity was part of the plan of extermination.

For a collection of narratives by and about former prisoners of Villa Grimaldi see www.lashistoriasquepodemoscontar.com


http://www.memoriayjusticia.cl/english/en_focus-grimaldi.html

[Judi Lynn]

21. Looking around your link, and going to google

I saw that the link said some of the prisoners at Villa Grimaldi, I believe, were part of the people grabbed by Operation Condor, and some by Operation Colombo.

I saw there's a TON of stuff to read about those two. I had only heard of Operation Condor, in the past, and learned some time ago that some Cuban "exiles" were involved in that. (The assassination of Letellier was part of that Operation, and as you know, two Cuban "exiles" from Florida were intimately involved as assassins.) Both Operations were created to vaporize leftist people by the not-so-well-adjusted rightwingers.

The name "Frank Church" came up again. Need to find out more about him. He must have been a Democratic Senator.

(snip) The US Senate Committee charged with investigating US involvement in Chile, chaired by Senator Frank Church, reported in 1974-5 that a secret group assembled by Henry Kissinger had financially supported many Chilean opposition organizations to sustain lengthy actions aimed at destabilizing the government.

• Allende government was not involved in terrorism (creating a climate of fear to destabilize the government); right-wing opposition groups were.

The US Senate Church Committee report concluded that the far right-wing party Patria y Libertad received finance to destabilize the country through bomb attacks and actions described as ‘terrorist’. Le Monde reported 500 right-wing attacks were committed in the 2-week period of late August-early September 1973, while the government parties appealed for calm. (snip)

http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/%7Eeumt/Chile.html

[Say_What]

22. After years of research one thing is certain

if there's terrorism or trouble of any kind in the Western Hemisphere you can bet $$$ that a Cuban-exile is involved. It's repeated over and over again in every major event such as the Letelier assasination, Che's assasination, the covert opts you mentioned, bombings around the globe, etc. etc. etc. The list is endless. The name *gusanos* is more than well deserved.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Speaking of gusanos

Here's an illustration of the critter with the same name given to Cuban "exiles" by Cubans:



A request for a translation from any Spanish-speaking DU'er who might see this post. I saw a cartoon in google images gusano, which is too large to post on this page. It has two gusanos sitting at a restaurant table, with a gusano waiter before them. The waiter is saying, "Déjenme que les hable de nuestro plato especial: un tejido infectado."

I can't find "tejido" in a Spanish-English dictionary. Thank you.

[Say_What]

24. Hey look! It's Ditzy-Balistic and the She-wolf

HEHEHEHEHE...

[Judi Lynn]

26. Dead ringers!

Lincoln!



Ileana

[Say_What]

29. Photoshop

if you can email me that restaurant image of the two gusanos, I will see if I can Photoshop these two. }(

[Judi Lynn]

30. Great!

That would be a total treat. I'd pass it around, too!

I sent it on to ya.

Thanks.