'Dirty war' general found guilty

[Heidi]

Source: BBC

Page last updated at 04:52 GMT, Thursday, 13 August 2009 05:52 UK

A former general who headed a notorious detention centre during Argentina's military rule has been sentenced to life in prison for human rights abuses.

Santiago Omar Riveros, 86, commanded the Campo de Mayo military barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

He was found guilty of involvement in the 1976 murder of 15-year-old communist youth member, Floreal Avellaneda, who was tortured to death.

Some 30,000 people disappeared or died in Argentina's 1976-1983 "Dirty War".

Riveros's former intelligence chief, Fernando Verplaetsen, was also jailed for 25 years in connection with the boy's killing.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8198702.stm

[MisterP]

1. your whore Menem can't save you now, butchers

come to America, where you mafiosos can run everything! *bangs head on wall*

[Judi Lynn]

2. It took forever, didn't it, for these right-wing monsters to get to trial?

That's because, as MisterP pointed out, Argentina's sleazy President Carlos Saúl Menem, a long-term Bush family friend, pardoned the top 9 officials of the murderous military dictatorship which was coached and supported by Henry Kissinger, and gave immunity to the rest. It wasn't until Argentinian President Néstor Kirchner (who, himself had been imprisoned and tortured by the dictatorship) was elected, that immunity was removed from these arch criminals.

http://www.hermes-press.com.nyud.net:8090/menem1.gif

Menem, and one of his wives, visiting Mr. Bush.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_HshAWI18e14/RfqG0XSrTKI/AAAAAAAAAUs/d84_5QXtIWM/s400/sgo+omar+riveros.jpg

http://criticadigital.com.nyud.net:8090/fotos/diegolevy_1.jpg http://www.telam.com.ar.nyud.net:8090/archivos/imagen/juicio_campomayo_400p270409.jpg

The right-wing monster, Santiago Omar Riveros.

http://www.pagina12.com.ar.nyud.net:8090/fotos/thumb/232/20080813/notas/na15fo02.jpg

Riveros's former intelligence chief, Fernando Verplaetsen

http://www.vientosdelsur.org.nyud.net:8090/Floreal%20Avellaneda2.jpg http://www.redeco.com.ar.nyud.net:8090/nv/images/stories/redeco/Nacional/ddhh/negrito.jpg

Floreal Avellaneda

http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_oKxrH2hdqSg/SfW6cGCgEiI/AAAAAAAAJMQ/S_EnQFAJ838/s320/Avellaneda.jpg

Floreal Avellaneda's parents

From an article published last May, in Argentina, google translated:

11-05-2009
Floreal Avellaneda's mother identified one of the murderers of her son
Iris Pereyra de Avellaneda acknowledged in his testimony to the former police bonaerense Aneto Alberto (pictured) as the operational chief of which was responsible for kidnapped with her son in 1976. The teenager, who in the Communist Party activist, was tortured and murdered the same year. His body was found shortly afterwards in the waters of the Rio de la Plata.

In his testimony as a witness of the abduction of Floreal "Negrito" Avellaneda, Avellaneda Iris Pereyra said former Deputy Commissioner Alberto Aneto the operator's responsibility to join his home in Munro.

"It was a paramilitary group and one of them was discovered to face: Rolo told him, commanded the operation at home, hit me and then tortured me at the Villa Martelli in Campo de Mayo," said Pereyra de Avellaneda to testify before the Tribunal Oral Federal 1 Saint Martin.

The trial principal is charged to general Omar Rivero Santiago, commander of the military garrison of Campo de Mayo in 1976, where he was transferred Floreal, a young militant of the Communist Party, whose body was found in the waters of the Rio de la Plata, one month After his abduction, the victim of the death flights.

They are also accused the former general Verplaetsen and Osvaldo Fernando Garcia as perpetrator with Riveros, while the former captain and lieutenant Fragni César Raúl first Harsich are attributed authorship of the crime immediately.

The statements of the woman and her husband, Floreal Avellaneda, now occupied the central section of the fifth hearing of the trial, which ended with applause from the audience, which was the Diana Conti and deputy national secretary of the Communist Party Patricio Etchegaray.

Iris Pereyra identified Aneto police from inquiries made after the return of democracy in 1983, on the staff who worked at the Villa Martelli, where she was taken along with his son after his abduction.

Aneto was just the only one of the defendants decided to testify. When it was his turn to testify, the former Buenos Aires police said: "I am totally innocent. I never left the station."

http://www.politicaymedios.com/politica/Declaro_la_madre_de_Floreal_Avellaneda_20090511160116.php

Here's a summary of some of the Dirty War officials you may want to consider:
http://www.yendor.com/vanished/junta.html

[formercia]

3. These monsters led the good life for the last 30 years.

What justice. Giving Life to an old man who will die soon anyway.

At least there is some justice, in the end.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Very sad they got protected so long by criminals in government like Bush's friend Menem.

What kind of man, or woman, really, would torture a child to death? And torture his parents?

I hope he'll be surrounded by grouchy people who won't be shy about telling him how it looks to them to deliberately terrorize and injure fatally a little boy.

[Wednesdays]

5. K&R

:kick:

[David__77]

6. Viva Negrito Avellaneda!

May many more step forward in his place!

[Judi Lynn]

7. Amnesty: General during Argentina's military dictatorship sentenced to life in prison

General during Argentina's military dictatorship sentenced to life in prison
14 August 2009

A former general who ran a detention centre during Argentina's military dictatorship has been sentenced to life in prison for human rights violations.

Santiago Omar Riveros was commander of the notorious Campo de Mayo prison near Buenos Aires where an estimated 5,000 prisoners were held during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Santiago Omar Riveros was found guilty on Thursday of torturing and beating to death Floreal Avellaneda, a 15 year old boy, and of abducting his mother Iris.

The two were abducted one month after the 1976 military coup, in order to find out the whereabouts of Floreal Avellaneda's father, a Communist Party Union leader of the same name.

Iris was released after nearly three years of detention and torture; her son's body was found washed up on the Uruguayan coast, bound by the hands and feet, and with signs of beating.

"This sentence is an important achievement in the fight for justice for the victims of Argentina's 'dirty war' and the struggle against impunity enjoyed by so many of the perpetrators," said Javier Zuniga, Amnesty International's special adviser.

The teenager's father said he was satisfied with the verdict, but called for Santiago Omar Riveros to receive no clemency."The sentence must be served in a common prison. Even if he dies in prison, he will never suffer what we suffered," he said.

The former general, who is now 86, is accused of more than 40 crimes against humanity involving victims of the era's so-called "disappeared". During the years of military rule, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, around 30,000 people vanished at the hands of the security forces and are still unaccounted for.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/good-news/general-during-argentina-military-dictatorship-sentenced-life-prison-20090814

[Judi Lynn]

8. For anyone unaware of US connections to Argentina's military dictatorship:

Published on Saturday, August 28, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
Kissinger Backed Dirty War Against Left in Argentina
Transcripts show former secretary of state urged violent crackdown on opposition

by Julian Borger in Washington and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires

Henry Kissinger gave Argentina's military junta the green light to suppress political opposition at the start of the "dirty war" in 1976, telling the country's foreign minister: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly," according to newly-declassified documents published yesterday.

State department documents show the former secretary of state urged Argentina to crush the opposition just months after it seized power and before the US Congress convened to consider sanctions.

"We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better," Mr Kissinger told Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, the foreign minister, according to the State Department's transcript.

Carlos Osorio, an analyst at the National Security Archive, a US pressure group which published the transcript, said it was likely to be seen by historians as "a smoking gun".

It is likely to be seized on by Mr Kissinger's critics who have been calling for him to face charges for abetting war crimes and human rights abuses in Cambodia, Chile and Argentina.

The Argentine junta formed a secret pact in 1976 known as the Condor Plan with other South American dictatorships in Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil for the eradication of "terrorists". According to official figures, nearly 9,000 people disappeared in Argentina alone but human rights organizations put the figure nearer to 30,000.

"The newly-revealed documents prove that as early as June 1976 Kissinger was informed of the existence of the Condor Plan," said Horacio Verbitsky, head of the Argentine human rights group Cels in Buenos Aires.

Mr Verbitsky, who during the 1970s ran an underground news service, said Mr Kissinger made it difficult for the US embassy in Buenos Aires to pressure Argentina's generals on human rights violations. "When US ambassador Robert Hill met with the generals to demand an end to the violence, the generals could say, your boss Kissinger knows what's happening and he doesn't care," he said.

The documents include a state department transcript of a conversation between Mr Kissinger, then secretary of state in the Ford administration and Mr Guzzetti, on October 7 1976, six months after the Argentine military had seized power.

By that time the regime's brutality had become clear. Mr Hill sent repeated notes to Washington, describing the abuses and his attempts to get the junta led by President Jorge Videla to stop the "disappearances" of its leftwing opponents.

But when Mr Guzzetti raised the issue at the October 1976 meeting at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, Mr Kissinger told him: "Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0828-02.htm

http://www.ua.es.nyud.net:8090/up/pinochet/imagenes/foto_pinochet10g.jpg http://graphics8.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2009/02/26/opinion/kissinger.nixon.533.jpg http://www1.pictures.gi.zimbio.com.nyud.net:8090/George+Bush+Receives+Henry+Kissinger+Prize+9lkRHtyaRc2l.jpg http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com.nyud.net:8090/news_theswamp/images/bush_kissenger_powell_1.jpg http://schema-root.org.nyud.net:8090/region/americas/north_america/usa/government/officials/henry_kissinger/henry_kissinger_sarah_palin.jpg http://www4.pictures.gi.zimbio.com.nyud.net:8090/Pres+Obama+Meets+Henry+Kissenger+George+Schultz+lLRdqHiKYssl.jpg

First photo: Kissinger, left, with Augusto Pinochet, Chile's murderous Nixon-puppet dictator.

[RedCloud]

9. For every one you killed, 1,000 more were born. ¡Hasta la victoria siempre!