Former `Operatiion Condor' operative arrested in Brazil

[Judi Lynn]

Former `Operatiion Condor' operative arrested in Brazil
Thu, 01 Mar 2007 06:34:15

Manuel Juan Cordero, a retired Uruguayan colonel, who was wanted due to the role he played in the so-called dirty war crimes in Both Argentina and Uruguay, was arrested in Brazil, officials said on Tuesday.
(snip)

According to the Uruguayan Interior Ministry, it wants Cordero for the unaccounted-for disappearance of a leftist dissident during the country's 1973-85 military dictatorship, and Argentina wants his extradition for the murder of two Uruguayan politicians in Buenos Aires in 1976.

Several South American military governments embarked on an alleged crackdown of the leftist dissidents in 1970's, in what has become known as Operation Condor.

Cordero fled to Brazil in 2005 after Uruguay courts began stepping up probes of the tortures and disappearances in the country during the military era.
(snip/)

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=1054§ionid=3510207



“Dirty” Uruguayan Colonel Held in Brazil
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Wednesday, 28 February 2007

A retired Uruguayan colonel wanted in "dirty war" probes was detained on Monday in Brazil.

Manuel Juan Cordero, an advocate of torture, is wanted in Uruguay for his connection in the disappearance of a leftist dissident during the country’s 1973-85 military dictatorship.

Argentina is also seeking Cordero’s extradition for the kidnapping of well-known native poet Juan Gelman’s daughter-in-law, as well as for his role in the coordination of the repression of dissidents in South America under Operation Condor.

Cordero spent time in Argentina and worked from Automotores Orletti, Operation Condor’s base in Buenos Aires. He is believed to be responsible for the detention, torture and "disappearance" of scores of people.
(snip/...)

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/644/1/

[Benhurst]

1. Good. It's never too late for a hanging.

[Roland99]

2. "Mothers of the Disappeared"

Midnight, our sons and daughters
Were cut down and taken from us
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat

In the wind we hear their laughter
In the rain we see their tears
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat

Night hangs like a prisoner
Stretched over black and blue
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat

In the trees our sons stand naked
Through the walls our daughters cry
See their tears in the rainfall

U2

[anotherdrew]

3. I hope this scum lives like an animal in a jail cell for the rest of his worthless life

"it's time to send a message"

[gratuitous]

4. Get smoking, Mr. Cordero

You need to contract lung cancer and fast if you're going to cheat justice.

[Supersedeas]

5. bet he has friends in high places

[Judi Lynn]

6. There are still many people who don't know about Operation Condor,

and its connection with the U.S. Here's a brief look, from a google grab:

The Undead Ghost of Operation Condor

by
J. Patrice McSherry

When Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier and his U.S. colleague Ronni Moffitt were killed in a powerful car bombing on a Washington D.C. street in September 1976, few realized that the double assassination was the work of Operation Condor. Condor was a Cold War-era covert network of U.S.-backed Latin American military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru in less central roles. The secret Condor apparatus enabled the militaries to share intelligence--and to seize, torture, and execute political opponents across borders. Condor agents also assassinated key opposition leaders around the world. Today, as shadowy U.S. forces use “disappearance,” torture, and illegal cross-border transfers of prisoners in the “war on terror”--practices that evoke Condor in the 1970s--an examination of Operation Condor and its methods is as instructive as it is unsettling.

During the Cold War, when anticommunism often overrode human rights in Washington’s policy calculus, U.S. military and intelligence forces worked closely with the Latin American intelligence agencies--such as the SS-like Directorate of National Intelligence (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, DINA), Chile’s secret police--that made up the nucleus of Condor. One of the key organizers of Operation Condor was DINA commander Manuel Contreras. In 2000 the CIA acknowledged that Contreras had been a paid CIA agent between 1974 and 1977, a period when the Condor network was planning and carrying out assassinations in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. The ramifications of state terror have not subsided in Latin America. Indeed, investigations and judicial cases have multiplied in recent years, proving once again that war crimes and crimes against humanity create wounds that cannot be simply forgotten or forgiven, even after generations.
(snip/...)

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/mcsherry.htm

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


March 6, 2001

On March 6, 2001, The New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications among South American intelligence chiefs who were working together to eliminate left-wing opposition groups in their countries as part of a covert program known as Operation Condor.

The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who has published several articles on Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."

In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America." This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries." White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, is concerned that the U.S. connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt who were killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in U.S. interest."

The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released last November on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington’s role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final "tranche" of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.

"This document opens a pandora's box of questions on the U.S. knowledge of, and role in, Operation Condor," said Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project.
(snip/...)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/

[underpants]

7. I wish I could recommend this post itself

Great post thanks

[donkeyotay]

8. kick nt