Pinochet indicted for 1973 executions

[FVZA_Colonel]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061127/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/chile_pinochet



Pinochet indicted for 1973 executions
By Eduardo Galladro

SANTIAGO, Chile - Former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted Monday and ordered to remain under house arrest for the execution of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the freely elected Marxist president who was toppled in a 1973 coup.

The indictment came after Pinochet's 91st birthday Saturday, which he marked by issuing a statement for the first time taking full political responsibility for abuses committed by his regime.

Monday's indictment was the fifth time Pinochet has been put under house arrest on charges stemming from human rights violations during his 1973-90 dictatorship. The document was issued by Judge Victor Montiglio, the Supreme Court press office said.

Pinochet was stripped of his immunity from prosecution in the case last July.

[uppityperson]

1. hmm, 36 yrs. Better than never.

will be watching and waiting.

[nebula]

2. His crimes had the full backing and support of Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger needs to be tried as well.

[grizmaster]

3. So when does Kissinger get indicted

for his war crimes in Chile?

[mom cat]

4. As soon as his plane has to make an emergency landing in a country

that has a warrent out for him.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Suddenly I'm starting to see a picture I had been missing here.

So they killed Allende's body guards? What does that tell us?

The coup figures under Pinochet were bombing the building where Allende was, "La Moneda" with airplanes from his own military. Now if they slaughtered his body guards, and it suddenly is announced he has committed SUICIDE, I wonder if there is any connection!



http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~caguirre/bombardeo_la%20moneda.bmp

Here's a short look at the bombing of La Moneda, and the coup:

http://www.chipsites.com/derechos/history_eng.html



Here's information I have NEVER heard, but it has been known in Chile, concerning more drastic aspects of Pinochet's rule of terror:

OVENS OF LONQUÉN

A Painful Discovery

"Yellowing splinters of skull with some traces of head hair; some loose, black, hairs; torn clothing which can be recognized as being from a pair of jeans, a man’s sweater..."

(A description by the assistant director of the Hoy magazine, Abraham Santibañez, of the human remains found in the limestone ovens in Lonquen, November 30, 1978.)

Those were some of the remains of the 15 men arrested on the 7th of October 1973, in the rural community of Isla de Maipo, and whose whereabouts were unknown until the end of 1978, when the ovens of Lonquen were discovered.

The discovery, which shook public opinion, became a painful landmark in the history of the disappeared in Chile - a story that began in 1973 with the military coup - for it confirmed the suspicion held by many relatives of the disappeared that their loved ones were indeed dead. The regime could no longer continue claiming - as Sergio Diez, the Chilean delegate before the United Nations General Assembly did on November 7, 1975 - that "many of the supposedly disappeared do not legally exist."

It was in the Isla de Maipo police headquarters that the 15 men, aged between 17 and 51, were last seen alive. Sergio Maureira Lillo and his four sons, Rodolfo Antonio, Sergio Miguel, Segundo Armando and Jose Manuel; Oscar Hernandez Flores and his brothers Carlos and Nelson; Enrique Astudillo Alvarez and his two sons Omar and Ramon; and four young men: Miguel Brant, Ivan Ordoñez, Jose Herrera and Manuel Navarro, all disappeared after being arrested by Isla de Maipo Carabineros police under orders of police chief Lautaro Castro Mendoza.

Their relatives, whose intense search for their loved ones led invariably to nothing, learned of the men’s fate only five years later, when their remains were discovered in the abandoned limestone ovens of Lonquen.
(snip/)

http://www.chipsites.com/derechos/history_eng.html
(Same source as the one just above)

[Cleita]

7. I remember the announcement of the "suicide" of Allende.

He had shot himself with a machine gun with forty bullets or something around that figure. I remember my husband and I going, "What?"

Were the bullets from this suicide also in his back? I never saw a clarification of this.

[Say_What]

8. Last words of Salvador Allende...

Workers of my homeland: I have faith in Chile and its future.
other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when
treason is trying to be uppermost. You must continue to know
that, sooner rather than later, grand avenues will be opened
where free men will go to build a better society."
"Long lives Chile, long live the people, long live the workers."
These are my last words, certain that the sacrifice will not
be in vain. I am shure that there will be at least a moral
sanction that will punish the felony, cowardice and treason




Last photo of Allende alive.

[Say_What]

9. ovens in Lonquen...

I believe that Isabel Allende (niece of Salvador) describes this in a fictional way in one of her books--can't remember which one, maybe House of the Spirits or Of Love and Shadows.

Also, the Grupo de Amigos, Allende's private security team were arrested just after the coup and murdered. A longtime DU reader :hi: described what happened to these men. He lived through the coup and Pinochet dictatorship and as a journalist was allowed into the National Stadium not long after. He also saw the photos of Allende's body, which were never seen outside of Chile. I never bought that Allende committed suicide, but Allende's last words, "These are my last words, certain that the sacrifice will not be in vain", perhaps indicate otherwise. If I remember correctly, Assassination on Embassy Row details what happened to those arrested during and after the coup.


Prisoners outside the La Moneda Palace after their surrender during the coup (1973). Most of them were executed a few hours later.

[Judi Lynn]

12. So glad you mentioned Isabelle Allende refered to the "ovens" in Longuen.

It's only the second reference I've ever seen in my life. Who would have BELIEVED that Chile actually burned "leftists" in ovens during the 1970's, ordinarily? Of course, who would have believed they would have been torturing them around the clock in 9 torture centers, and on 3 torture ships offshore.

This WAS the right-wing dictator's administration Nixon and Kissinger helped into office, after destroying the socialist President who had been elected by the Chilean people. Looks like something they probably don't feel too proud of publicizing in the States!

Here's the first reference which popped up in my search:

The essay: Political football
Independent, The (London), Jul 8, 2000 by Ben Richards

~snip~
.....I talked to some of the players about the Pinochet case. Some of them were not even born when he staged his coup and barely remembered the atrocities committed in the following years - teachers with their throats cut, a young exile who returned and was burned alive. Nevertheless, they were scornful of the idea of bringing him to justice in Chile. "There is no justice in this country," one of them said drily. All of them still expressed deep hatred and fear for the militarised police, known universally as pacos, as well as contempt for the legal system which many of them had encountered at first hand.

The stadium where the game was to be held was about an hour from Santiago and (finally) the bus set off into the Chilean countryside. As we neared our destination, we passed through the town of Lonquen. It is a small town of bitter renown. At the end of the Seventies the first mass graves of those tortured and murdered after the coup were discovered here......
(snip/...)

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000708/ai_n14328142

[Taverner]

13. Not only that, but the team that Pinochet brought in

after were the same fuckers that Bush brought in in 2000

[Say_What]

22. Isabel Allende was interviewed recently on Democracy Now

where they reviewed her most recent book, Ines of My Soul, but she also spoke about the US-supported Chilean coup and Michele Bachelt. It was wonderful to hear her voice after reading so many of her books. Here's a few clips.

...AMY GOODMAN: And also the fact that this new woman president of Chile has just gone to Villa Grimaldi, where she had been held, as well as her mother.

ISABEL ALLENDE: Michele Bachelet is an extraordinary person, no matter that she’s a woman. It’s wonderful that we have a woman president in Chile for the first time. And what is even more wonderful is that she has come to the government and appointed 50% of women in every level of government. So when you see a photograph of the secretaries of state or any official photograph, the caption says, “Count the women,” because 50% are women. It’s the first time in history that female energy and male energy, in equal terms, are running a country. It’s the management of the country with this female energy. And I think that it’s an extraordinary experiment. And if it works, it will be imitated, and it will open up new spaces for peace and understanding in the world.

..Now, Michele's story is very interesting. She was the daughter of a general, General Bachelet, who did not comply with the coup, the day of the military coup. He was arrested by his peers, and he died in torture, tortured by his friends. And then his wife and his daughter, who was then practically a child, were also arrested, and they were tortured. Eventually they were set free, and they ended up first in Australia, then in Germany, where Michele became a doctor, a pediatrician. And as soon as she could, she returned to Chile, even in times of Pinochet, and started working to defeat Pinochet. Then she became Minister of Health, Minister of Defense, the first woman Minister of Defense, who had to deal with the same people who had killed her father and tortured her and her mother. And this woman lived in a building, where she would meet her torturer in the elevator. So this is what Chile has had to put up with.

So when General Pinochet, after 30-something years, says that he’s willing to meet the victims, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. Now, Michele has never talked about revenge. She has never talked about these things. She doesn't want to be used as an example. And she doesn't talk about reconciliation, because that is a word that she thinks is very personal. You reconcile and you forgive in the deepest of your heart, and you cannot ask that from anyone. She talks about reuniting the Chilean family, getting together and building the future together. But reconciliation, forgiveness is something that is very personal. So I have great admiration for this woman.

...ISABEL ALLENDE: The role of the United States, not only in Latin America, but in many other places in the world, is unknown by many people in the United States. People here don't know what the CIA and the American government has done abroad. And we know, because we are the ones who suffered it. The CIA was deeply involved in the military coup in Chile, deeply involved in torture and killings and disappearing people. And, of course, when Allende was elected, he was a socialist and a Marxist, democratically elected in the most solid and longest democracy in Latin America, Chile, and immediately the American government decided that that could not happen and they were willing to destroy anything in Chile to destroy Allende. And they did, eventually.

So my role, when I speak in public, when I go around this country, when I write, when I answer interviews, is tell people, because people don't know what’s happening. People don't know what’s happening in Iraq. We see stuff on TV that doesn't look real. It looks like a video game. We don't see the collateral damage. And the collateral damage on women and children, it's you and me. That's the collateral damage. Before, in a war, 90% of the casualties would be the military. Maybe 10% is civilians. Today, it’s the other way around: 10% are the military, and the rest are collateral damage, civilians, we the children, the women.

So I get very angry with this theme, and I’m sorry that I can't keep my voice cool, as I should, but I get very angry when I see what’s happening. And I am an American citizen. I love this country, and I want to change it. And this is what I think we are doing, many, many people, like Alice Walker and many others.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/1454233

[Say_What]

10. Time Magazine article from September 24, 1973

Like the USSA tried to do in the failed Venezuelan coup in 2002, they blamed Allende--said he brought the trouble on himself and of course they denied knowing anything about the Chilean coup. :puke: :puke: :puke:

<clips>

One country was conspicuously silent: the U.S. The Nixon Administration had been antagonistic to Allende ever since he emerged as the likely winner of the 1970 presidential campaign. Washington's hostility increased after Allende's new government fully nationalized copper mines and other industrial properties owned by U.S. companies and declined to pay several of them compensation. Relations between the two countries grew worse when it was revealed that multinational ITT had offered the U.S. Government more than $1,000,000 to help prevent Allende's election, and had held discussions with the CIA on possible ways to keep him out of office.

The Nixon Administration did what it could to make life for Allende uncomfortable, mostly through financial pressure on institutions like the World Bank. In August 1971, as a result of U.S. complaints that debt-laden Chile was a poor credit risk, the Export-Import Bank refused to make a $21 million loan to Lan-Chile airline to enable it to buy three Boeing jets, even though the airline had a perfect repayment record. U.S. exports to Chile overall declined 50% during Allende's three years.

Military Rapport. But the Pentagon remained on relatively good terms with Chile's military brass. Last year, for instance, the U.S. extended $10 million to the Chilean air force to buy transport planes and other equipment. The military rapport was so solid, in fact, that stories were circulating in Washington last week that U.S. officials had known about the coup up to 16 hours before it took place.

White House spokesmen denied that the Administration had had any such foreknowledge. There had been many rumors−with many different dates−of a possible coup, they insisted, but nothing solid had been known until La Moneda was actually stormed. In any case, the U.S. had not moved to alert Allende on the ground that to do so would have been interfering in the internal affairs of another nation. The explanation was obviously not strong enough to dispel the suspicion that the U.S. had played some part in engineering the Chilean President's overthrow.

Allende bore much of the blame for his own downfall. His socialist fiscal policies shattered Chile's economy instead of helping it. Always a net importer of food, the country had to import still more because Allende's land-reform programs reduced production. The government, as owner of the copper mines, was in deep trouble when world copper prices fell. Foreign reserves totaled $345 million when Allende took office; by the end of last year they had disappeared, and Chile was forced to plead for rescheduling of more than $2.5 billion in international debts. The country was so polarized in the end that Allende was under simultaneous attack by rightists for being too extreme and by leftists for being too timid.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,907929,00.html

[Judi Lynn]

11. VERY interesting to read Time's info. & the part showing people abroad blamed the CIA!

It's also worth noting how much misinformation they ALSO included for our consumption. Of course, there's a lot which just didn't come out until much later, but TIME looks pretty bad for its protection of the Nixon image!

They don't admit how deeply Nixon was involved BEFORE the coup, which can easily be detected now through research, and they did lay ALL the blame on Allende for something which was planned and executed in the U.S. by Richard Nixon, himself: the collapse of Chile's economy.

I did a quick search for "make the economy scream" since it pops up again and again as something Nixon said, himself, as they plotted to devastate Chile through multiple attacks in many areas. This article can help DU'ers who haven't read in this area, yet:

Was the election he won free and democratic?

Not entirely, because there were major efforts to disrupt it, mainly by the US. It wasn't the flrst time the US had done that. For example, our government intervened massively to prevent Allende from winning the preceding election, in 1964. In fact, when the Church Committee investigated years later, they discovered that the US spent more money per capita to get the candidate it favored elected in Chile in 1964 than was spent by both candidates (Johnson and Goldwater) in the 1964 election in the US!

Similar measures were undertaken in 1970 to try to prevent a free and democratic election. There was a huge amount of black propaganda about how if Allende won, mothers would be sending their children off to Russia to become slaves-stuff like that. The US also threatened to destroy the economy, which it could-and did-do.

Nevertheless, Allende won. A few days after his victory, Nixon called in CIA Director Richard Helms, Kissinger and others for a meeting on Chile. Can you describe what happened?

As Helms reported in his notes, there were two points of view. The "soft line" was, in Nixon's words, to "make the economy scream." The "hard line" was simply to aim for a military coup.

Our ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, who was a Kennedy liberal type, was given the job of implementing the "soft line." Here's how he described his task: "to do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." That was the soft line.
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomskyOdonian_Chile.html

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

I remember hearing your friend, the DU reader you mention discussing Chile at various times, SayWhat. He was in a great place for news stories, but the toll it would take on a man's (or woman's) spirit to have witnessed those events would be horrendous. He has to be a very resilient person.

[Say_What]

23. The world sees the USSA for what it is, too bad Joe Sixpac

and the majority of 'murikan Sheeple are so ignorant about their own government's actions around the globe.

A few years back I saw this documentary about the School of the Americas and one scene was with a large international press corps asking Bob Dole what the purpose of the School of the America's was and him responding "to spread democracy". The room roared with laughter and Dole looked absolutely befuddled as to why they were laughing. Those Repukes sure are stooopid.

Our friend has since retired and is under the spell of the Land of Enchantment and probably spending part of the year in the south of Chile as his wife is Chilean. He was a great source of interesting information and I miss hearing from him. You probably remember his response to Wesley Clark running for pres.. "no more milicos for me"

[Judi Lynn]

27. "No more milicos for me!" Good one! I think the context of his life experiences would explain that

Can't imagine living through those times where that was happening without being unbalanced forever, but he seems very, very strong, after all of it.

No doubt there's a better Chile to return to, unless _Bush decides to do to Bachelet what Nixon did to Allende. Hope Chile has learned enough from that event to be able to get in front of future attempts to control it from Washington. It surely doesn't take them long to line up all the corruptible ones in the military in those countries, does it? With top military officers under their control, it's a snap to overthrow a president, as it seems.

And you're right, it's a goddamned shame so many insist on ignoring what has really been happening. The same deliberate idiots probably have asked how did the German people couldn't have known what was happening in the concentration camps.

Enough has been uncovered by now that there is actually NO EXCUSE for ignorance here. By now, it seems people are starting to make excuses for the excesses of right-wing American pResidents.

[Say_What]

31. I agree, there's no excuse any more... but the propaganda machine

in the USSA works damned well. From childhood right on up the line.

[Cleita]

6. Too bad we can't get Kissinger with him.

I still have hope though.

[Bassic]

15. Yeah, that would indeed be good justice. nt

[Bassic]

14. It's about fucking time.

He'll die before he sees the inside of a jail, though.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

16. I fucking PROMISE to post very happy posts here when he dies.

Further, I promise to verbally assault anyone who chastises me for that, to the fullest extent of my linguistic abilities.

[Bassic]

17. Yeah, the fucker deserves it. nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

18. This fucking subthread has a fucking excess of the fucking word "fuck." -nft

[Bassic]

19. I fucking disagree when it comes to fucking Pinochet

there's no such fucking thing as too fucking much. :)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

20. Do you fucking know what kind of fucking mental image you just fucking gave me?

Thank you very fucking much, fucker. Now I gotta wash my fucking brain with Drano.

[Bassic]

21. My fucking pleasure!

I was fucking totally did that on fucking purpose

eofm

[Say_What]

24. No, no, no....

we want the old POS to live long and suffer much along with his buddy Kissinger. ;-)


Pinochet and Kissinger after the coup


'This old guy is in very bad health...everything's full of blood' (La Jornada, Mexico)

[Bassic]

28. If Kissinger is ever brought to justice,

We'll groups of pigs flying around in the sky.

[Say_What]

29. Bring Henry to Trial: 1-866-DO-HENRY

[leveymg]

25. A State of Exception: Pinochet's Chile was the model for Bush's America.

Chile has been called the "laboratory state" for the political, economic, and social experiments of the 20th Century. That lovely country of towering mountains that rise from the sea, a land of vinyards, old stone buildings and weathered democratic ideals once seemed the ideal place where "socialism with a human face", in Salvadore Allende's words, might prosper. Sensing that might be true, back in the 1950s, Washington dispatched legions of social scientists, propagandists, and black ops specialists.

By 1973, spooks with doctorate degrees created the right atmosphere for the coup of 9/11. Chile was annealed in the fires of CIA Psychological Warfare programs, Chicago School Supply-Side Economics, and States of Constitutional Exception. Disappearances and legalized torture of "terrorists" became routine. Papered over by carefully-worded denials and legal memos, the reality of hidden torture centers and the Ovens of Lonquen began to seem almost normal, like Gitmo, regarded with distaste but tolerated for a long time.

What did Chile do to deserve this honor to serve as the model showcase?

It's the most European of the Southern Cone countries. In many ways, it's a bit of England, Germany and Spain transplanted to the South Pacific, where it is isolated by a ring of Andean peaks and deserts that offer a natural barrier to the outside world. The ideal testing ground for defective theories that later found their way to the larger states at the center of the Empire.

Chile's legacy is ours. We are Chile, here in Reagan-Bush's America and Thatcher-Blair Britain, on a grand scale.

[Cleita]

26. I don't know, but when I lived and visited there, its ores were

being exploited by American Companies, Anaconda Copper and Kennecott Copper. Grace National Bank, which also owned Grace Lines controlled the shipping between there and the USA. It also was one of the few democracies then in a South America full of dictatorships, banana republics, and regular revolutions in those places.

It had the distinction of never having a revolution after the secession from Spain, up until the coup of September 11th in 1973. I believe it's downfall was an institutionalized class society, which enabled the USA to get the aristocratic land owners and upper middle classes to accept the idea that Allende, champion of the working class, the poor and the disenfranchised, had to go to save Chile from the communists.

This is what happened and what is happening to us although it has taken longer with us.

[Say_What]

30. Tio Sam couldn't afford another Cuba in LatAm and the US was

willing to pay any price to prevent that from happening. Just like they're doing now with Venezuela and have done for decades to Cuba, they threw unlimited amounts of $$$ to destabilize Allende's government right from the beginning--all in the name of fighting *communism*. :sarcasm:

<clips>

...Revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," prompted a major scandal in the mid-1970s, and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate. Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976.

These documents include:

** Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry after Allende's election, detailing conversations with President Eduardo Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.

** CIA memoranda and reports on "Project FUBELT"--the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende's government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende's government

** National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to "destabilize" Chile economically, and isolate Allende's government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.

** State Department and NSC memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the new military regime led by General Pinochet.

** FBI documents on Operation Condor--the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm