U.S. charges former Salvadorean defense chief

[struggle4progress]

Source: Reuters

MIAMI, Feb 23 (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors charged a former defense minister from El Salvador who lost a civil torture lawsuit in 2002, with passport fraud and lying to federal agents in an indictment made public on Monday.

Jose Guillermo Garcia, a longtime legal resident of Florida, was defense minister from 1979 to 1983 and was a member of the U.S.-backed government during the Central American nation's civil war. He had been accused by Salvadoreans of permitting atrocities.

U.S. immigration authorities seized his passport several years ago for reasons they would not disclose. The indictment alleges Garcia obtained a new passport by falsely telling the Salvadorean government he had lost the original.

The indictment alleges he committed fraud by using that passport to re-enter the United States at Miami International Airport in July 2006, and that he also lied to U.S. immigration authorities about his original passport at that time ...

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN2N513368

[Peace Patriot]

1. Tinfoil hat time. A Salvadoran immigrant is apparently going to be charged with

the murder of Chandra Levy (Gary Condit's mistress), which I have long suspected was a Dick Cheney hit. (Possibly favor to Condit, who, two days later, voted for the first Bush/Cheney tax cut for the rich--a very close and controversial vote in which only 10 Democrats voted yea. Or possibly some other Condit/Cheney connection--for instance, something to do with Condit being a member of the House intelligence committee, privy to many secrets, during the big shakeup--purge?--of the FBI that summer ('01, just prior to 9/11). Note: Condit met with Cheney at 12:00 noon on the day Levy disappeared--a meeting about which there was lots of weirdness in the corpo/fascist media and involving the DC police and the FBI.)

Now, eight years later, the DC police suddenly find a suspect--a Salvadoran immigrant in jail on other sex offenses, and in no position to defend himself?

Something smells to high heaven. And, if my suspicion is true, this may be Cheney calling in favors (or applying muscle, threats, blackmail?) to tidy up after himself.

So, you see why my tinfoil hat may be appropriate, with U.S. prosecutors going after a "former defense minister from El Salvador" (fascist death squad torturer/murderer--someone Cheney would have great affinity for, and would likely have connections to) on a passport violation, as he moved freely in and out of the U.S. back in 2006 (under Cheney's protection?).

I'm beginning to feel sorry for this poor sap--the already jailed El Salvadoran--and I'm wondering if he's guilty of anything. Maybe all trumped up, to have a patsy in custody, for when the Bush Junta was out of power, and honest U.S. attorneys or FBI began sniffing around the Condit/Cheney connection. OR, these are Bush plants in the DoJ* and/or FBI, cleaning up after Cheney. If they're honest, they might have arrested Garcia on a charge that I would guess is routinely ignored in Miami, for fascist Latin Americans (Garcia, a "long time resident of Miami"), in order to question him about the other El Salvadoran--the one in jail about to be charged with Levy's murder. Garcia's passport violation occurred back in 2006. Why are they arresting him now? OR, if they're not honest, to shut him up, pressure him, get him offed?

I don't know. I don't know enough yet to spin a good tinfoil. I'm just saying my antennae are activated.

-------

*(There is a Bushwhack U.S. attorney in Miami, who's been carrying out a Bushwhack/CIA scenario, involving anti-Castro Miami mafia taking $700,000 in cash in a suitcase into Argentina, and blaming it in Hugo Chavez--saying that Chavez was sending campaign money to Argentina's leftist president. I can't recall his name right now. If he's the one who has arrested Garcia, on a passport violation from 2006, I would say we need John Le Carre on call to untangle this Bushwhack spider's web.)

[struggle4progress]

2. Torture Victims In El Salvador Are Awarded $54 Million (2002)

By DAVID GONZALEZ
Published: July 24, 2002

A federal jury ordered two retired Salvadoran generals today to pay $54.6 million in damages to three civilians who were tortured by security forces during El Salvador's civil war more than 20 years ago.

The jury, in West Palm Beach, found that José Guillermo García and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova knew of atrocities committed by their troops and did nothing to prevent them. Mr. García was minister of defense in the period covered by the suit, and Mr. Vides was the head of the National Guard. The two, who have been living in Florida since 1989, were not present in the courtroom for the verdict.

The case was brought under the 1992 Torture Victims Protection Act, which provides civil remedies for survivors of abuses during armed conflicts. The three plaintiffs gave graphic testimony of beatings, gang rapes and other forms of torture in the early 1980's by El Salvador's military, which was supported by the United States during a bloody conflict in which 75,000 people were killed ... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEFDF1238F937A15754C0A9649C8B63

[struggle4progress]

3. EL SALVADOR: Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia

In January 2006, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld our $54.6 million jury verdict against Generals Jose Guillermo Garcia and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, two former Ministers of Defense who oversaw the worst period of human rights abuses in El Salvador's history. The case was originally filed by CJA on behalf of Juan Romagoza, Neris Gonzalez and Carlos Mauricio in 1999. In 2002, after a four week trial, a West Palm Beach jury found the generals responsible for the torture of the three plaintiffs.

Romagoza Arce is one of the first cases in which a jury in a fully contested trial found perpetrators liable for human rights abuses solely under the doctrine of command responsibility. The command responsibility doctrine, used in the Nuremberg trials after World War II, provides that commanders may be held responsible for abuses committed by their subordinates if the commanders knew or should have known that abuses were taking place, and failed to take all reasonable measures to prevent the abuses or punish the perpetrators.

In July 2006, with the judgment final, Defendant Vides Casanova was forced to relinquish over $300,000 of his own funds. This collection represents one of the first human rights cases in U.S. history in which survivors have recovered money from those found responsible for abuses ...

http://www.cja.org/cases/romagoza.shtml

[struggle4progress]

4. Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador (1993)

... The Commission on the Truth finds that ...

The arrest and execution of the churchwomen was planned prior to their arrival at the airport ... The Minister of Defence at the time, General José Guillermo Garcia, made no serious effort to conduct a thorough investigation of responsibility for the murders ...

There is full proof that on 11 December 1981, in the village of El Mozote, units of the Atlacatl Battalion deliberately and systematically killed a group of more than 200 men, women and children, constituting the entire civilian population that they had found there the previous day and had since been holding prisoner ... Although it received news of the massacre, which wculd have been easy to corroborate because of the profusion of unburied bodies, the Armed Forces High Command did not conduct or did not give any word of an investigation and repeatedly denied that the massacre had occurred. There is full evidence that General José Guillermo Garcia, then Minister of Defence, initiated no investigations that might have enabled the facts to be established ...

On 22 August 1982, in the place known as El Calabozo situated beside the Amatitán river in the north of the Department of San Vicente, troops of the Atlacatl Rapid Deployment Infantry Battalion (BIRI) killed over 200 men, women and children whom they were holding prisoner ... On 8 September, two weeks after the incident, the massacre was reported in The Washington Post. The Minister of Defence, General José Guillermo Garcia, said that an investigation had been made and that no massacre had occurred. He repeated this assertion in an interview with the Commission ...

http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/salvador/informes/truth.html

[Peace Patriot]

5. Thanks for all this info, Struggle. I will study it. I started a thread on my tinfoil

hat theory, in the L/A forum, here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x12059

I've found a bunch of info on the El Salvadoran who is apparently going to be charged with Chandra Levy's murder. I'm smelling patsy--strong smell.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Wanted to thank you seriously for reminding us of that strange connection between Cheney and Condit

which seemed so utterly inexplicable as soon as we heard it all those years ago.

I had buried this at the very bottom of my memory, since we've been hit by everything but the kitchen sink from the moment _Bush stole the Presidency. There's a lot of unforgiveable, rotten stuff which has happened since November, 2000, and this Condit material sank right to the bottom.

This is completely creepy, and needs illumination, and cleaning out, so we can all move on in a clean way, not a deceitful way, like the last Presidency.

And of course the other El Salvadoran is connected to the massacres backed by Ronald Reagan, Bush's dad's boss. They really love their chances to kill off the meek, and helpless Latin Americans, pre-emptorily slaughtering them to prevent their becoming commies.

Who could ever live with their consciences, or would they somehow be overwhelmed with the urge to forget everything about their lives, at some point? As you've seen in one hearing after another, Republicans seem to have an unnatural predisposition to become forgetful when you'd least expect it. It seems to afflict them all as soon as they are questioned.

I'll be keeping my eyes open for information on these points you've raised. Thank you.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Thanks for the excellent material. Looking forward to reading it tonight. n/t

[EFerrari]

7. I don't know about a Levy connection but isn't there an election in March

that the polls show the leftist candidate ahead in?

I'll ask my friend about it tonight. He was in El Salvador at the time and he has a sister in Miami, too.

[Peace Patriot]

10. Yes, there is a presidential election March 15, and the FMLN candidate is way ahead.

See
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44738
http://links.org.au/node/846
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/11/03/el-salvador-fmln-leading-in-latest-polls/

FMLN Candidate Ahead in Salvadoran Race
October 13, 2008
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/fmln_candidate_ahead_in_salvadoran_race/

--

El Salvador: FMLN Candidate Ahead in Salvadoran Race, Angus Reid Global Monitor (2008)

"Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the frontrunner in the race for El Salvador’s presidency, according to a poll by Universidad Centroamericana. 49.7 per cent of respondents would vote for Funes in next year’s ballot."
http://aceproject.org/regions-en/ife/SV/news/el-salvador-fmln-candidate-ahead-in-salvadoran

[EFerrari]

8. Another thought: If La CIA had his passport taken some years ago

it's just as likely that they wanted to make sure he didn't leak any information that might incriminate them about events he was involved with . . . . .

[Peace Patriot]

11. Yet he was permitted to remain in Miami. "A long time resident of Miami,"

was how one news report described him. If he was convicted of war crimes, and his passport was lifted, what was he doing in Miami for the last three years? The Bushwhacks certainly knew who he was, and with all their new "homeland security" certainly knew he had reentered the country. So, why didn't they arrest him long ago? Why now? What was he living on, all that time? Either we have a case of the 'white hat' DoJ/FBI suddenly having leave to pursue him, cuz the Bushwhacks are gone (from official power), or we have a case of 'black hat' DoJ/FBI (Bushwhacks) trying to cover Bushwhack tracks about something--maybe the death squads and CIA involvement, but I tend to think it's something more recent. There is so much scandal in the country (tip of the iceberg, but still, we're flooded with it), I'm not sure anybody would even notice if some old El Salvdoran death squadder said that the old CIA had been entangled with those killings. And there has been so much shit going down in Miami--DoJ, FBI, CIA, Miami mafia, all involved in plots to destroy democratic leftist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other places--it is a hotbed of Bushwhackism with Garcia--a skilled fascist torturer and murderer--likely in the pay of the Bushwhacks, right there amongst them.

It is not at all outlandish to suggest that the Bushwhacks were using Miami fascist gangsters as hit men. Their pre-cursors back in 1963 certainly didn't hesitate to use them to kill a president of the United States.*

That's why I got to thinking about this Chandra Levy thing. Maybe Guandique killed her for money (or thought he was--but he was in truth set up). Maybe he was some kind of "Manchurian Candidate," programmed to kill. (His account of himself, as it comes through in corpo/fascist 'news' articles, has a kind of Sirhan Sirhan feel to it. It doesn't sound right--it doesn't make a lot of sense.) And maybe he's a patsy. I think we really need to "think outside the box" when it comes to Bushwhacks. They are treacherous, evil and extremely powerful monsters. There is nothing I would put past them.

So, on this story, I'm reserving judgment. There is no obvious connection--just what may be a coincidence (these two arrests of El Salvadorans--one 7 years, and the other 3 years, after their alleged crimes). But then, if my "tinfoil" is right, it would likely be hard to see the connection, at this point. We only find these things out for sure forty years later.*

---

*(Highly recommended: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," by James Douglass.)

[EFerrari]

12. That's what I mean. They didn't want him to go anywhere. n/t

[EFerrari]

9. Kick. Who would order this guy charged when CIA denied everything

he was ever involved with right up until the UN picked it up? Qui bono?

:shrug: