Bolivian who captured 'Che' wanted for questioning

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Bolivian who captured 'Che' wanted for questioning
By CARLOS VALDEZ
The Associated Press
Friday, March 19, 2010; 6:33 PM

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The retired general who captured legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was summoned Friday by Bolivian authorities investigating an alleged plot against President Evo Morales.

Former Gen. Gary Prado allegedly exchanged "ultrasecret" encrypted e-mail with Eduardo Rozsa, a Bolivian-born Hungarian who was slain in an April 2009 raid by an elite police unit.

Authorities allege that Rozsa and two other men killed - an Irishman and an ethnic Hungarian from Romania - were involved in a conspiracy to create a separatist right-wing militia in the eastern, opposition-dominated state of Santa Cruz.

Morales said when they were killed that a plot to assassinate him had been foiled.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031903942.html

---

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0h2V71G9ml7ZK/610x.jpg

AP Photo 29 months ago

Retired Bolivian Gen. Gary Prado shows photographs in his home in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Friday, Oct. 5, 2007. Prado led the mission to capture Cuba's late revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Bolivia. The 40th anniversary of Guevara's death is this Oct. 9, 2007.

[Judi Lynn]

1. An American attended the same murder, a Cuban "exile" CIA operative.

http://marcmasferrer.typepad.com.nyud.net:8090/uncommon_sense/images/2007/05/21/210906che_3.jpg

http://truthalliance.net.nyud.net:8090/Portals/0/Archive/Community%20Article%20Images/4815.jpg

The man standing by the wounded Che Guevara is Felix Rodriguez, Cuban "exile" who was in Bolivia
with the CIA at the time of the shooting and capture and the murder.

In the second photo, he is the man on the left lying on the stage of a night club, sitting in front of
Porter Goss, with a CIA team. Barry Seal sits behind Porter Goss.

http://cubainforma.interfree.it.nyud.net:8090/2009/usa/bushAndFelix.jpg

In the 3rd photo, he visits with
US Vice President George H W Bush.

[L. Coyote]

2. It was a political assassiation, death for being a liberal in Latin America

and the USA under Republicans was repeatedly the prime sponsor of that conservative ethic.

[wayne fontes]

10. Che was a killer in his own right

I wonder what an Argentinian (via Cuba) was doing in Bolivia?




Che was a butcher. Could all those who approve of his methods please please state your admiration of the man by responding to this comment.

I'm eagerly awaiting your response.

[mitchum]

16. I am well aware of Che's actions...

and have no objection to them.
Dead men make no more mischief.

[Lagomorph]

19. So it's OK to assassinate if it's....

...the Left doing it? Please, tell me where you draw the line. Trouble makers are an American tradition.

[Judi Lynn]

11. I wonder if our right-wing Presidents kept secret body counts on their victims in Latin America

They truly seem like the kind of subhuman types who would rejoice as the numbers spiraled, just as we've heard the 2 _Bush brother governors had an interest in going for big numbers of executions in their states.

Just stumbled across something I've never seen, from CNN, 1996:

Macabre new details emerge about Argentina's 'dirty war'
March 23, 1996
Web posted at: 6:20 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Jonathan Mann

CIUDAD DE LA PLATA, Argentina (CNN) -- New, chilling details have surfaced on a story that is two decades old, but still unfolding.

An ex-Navy officer from Argentina, Adolfo Scilingo, said in an interview that in 1970s Argentina, not only were political prisoners routinely dropped over the sea to drown, but they were made to dance first in a macabre celebration of the freedom they were told was awaiting them.

The strange revelation comes on the anniversary of a turning point, though not a happy one, for the South American nation. On Sunday, Argentina marks 20 years since the military took power and began its "Dirty War" on dissent. In the mid-1970s, left-wing guerrillas had sought to destabilize the country. When the Junta took over, anyone perceived as a leftist paid for that, dearly.

Until now, the military has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in its campaign against leftist guerrillas and political dissidents. The bones have been found in mass graves, but there has been no final accounting of the numbers. Human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people "disappeared."

http://www.cnn.com.nyud.net:8090/WORLD/9603/argentina.war/bones.jpg

Scilingo, a cashiered Navy captain, says he knows where at least 4,000 of them went. First, to detention. Then, to their deaths.

"They were played lively music and made to dance for joy, because they were going to be transferred to the south," he said. "After that, they were told they had to be vaccinated due to the transfer, and they were injected with pentonadal. And shortly after, they became really drowsy, and from there we loaded them onto trucks and headed off for the airfield."

Scilingo recounted the details in an interview with the prison television agency from the jail where he is serving a sentence for fraud. His criminal record might be reason to doubt his account, except that it has been corroborated by at least one other officer, who said he too knew that prisoners were routinely dropped into the ocean.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9603/argentina.war/

~~~~~~~

Published on Thursday, December 4, 2003 by the Miami Herald
Transcript: U.S. OK'd 'Dirty War'
New evidence suggests that Henry Kissinger gave the Argentine military 'a green light' in its 1970s-80s campaign against leftists.

by Daniel A. Grech

BUENOS AIRES - At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody ''dirty war'' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that ''we would like you to succeed,'' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.


The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or ''disappearance'' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.

The document is also certain to further complicate Kissinger's legacy, which has been questioned in recent years as new evidence has emerged on his connection to human-rights violations around the world -- including in Chile, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Kissinger and several top deputies have repeatedly denied condoning human-rights abuses in Argentina.

DIPLOMATIC CABLES

Among the 4,667 U.S. documents declassified by the State Department last year were diplomatic cables showing that the Argentine military believed it had Kissinger's approval. The information was requested by the families of the junta's victims and human-rights groups.

A transcript of the 1976 Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting was declassified recently under a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington. The document was made available to The Herald on Wednesday and will be presented at a conference on U.S.-Argentine relations during the dirty war today in Buenos Aires.

''Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed,'' Kissinger reassured Guzzetti in the seven-page transcript, marked SECRET. ``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/headlines03/1204-01.htm

[catzies]

12. Felix Rodriguez is still alive and well, last I heard, a free man in Miami

I may have read in the Herald of an illness, but I don't recall.

He is (or was) also a member of the Electoral College.

[flamingdem]

3. Guess he wanted another notch on his belt, unreal nt

[DesertFlower]

4. che was assassinated on my birthday.

:cry:

[formercia]

5. Don't forget Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon.'

He was involved with capturing Che.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Didn't know that much, formercia. Jeez. He continued to aid the same people who helped him escape

from the wrath of the prosecutors in Europe, apparently! That's amazing. He made a grotesque history for himself in France. What a hero he was when he rounded up children, also, for the gas chambers.

I've seen Klaus Barbie had high profile jobs in Hugo Banzer's coup government, and in the cocaine coup criminal Luis García Meza's government.

Useful to the reichwing in Europe, useful to the right-wing in the Americas.

[formercia]

7. It gets better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junio_Valerio_Borghese


--snip--

At the end of the war, Borghese was rescued by OSS officer James Angleton, who dressed him up in an American uniform and drove him from Milan to Rome for interrogation by the Allies. Borghese was then tried and convicted of collaboration with the Nazi invaders, but not of war crimes, by the Italian Court. He was "sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, discounted to 3 years, due to his glorious expeditions during the war, his defence of north east borders against Tito's IX Corpus and his defence of Genoa harbour".<5> . He was released from jail after 4 years of prison by the Italian Supreme Court in 1949.
--snip--
Borghese moved to Bolivia and was instrumental in the capture of Che.

[Judi Lynn]

8. ANOTHER super fascist living in Bolivia. This is also news which gets ignored by our corporate media

That's not any small matter, either. He was a big guy in his old realm. Big and horrible.

Looks like there's an opening to far more than almost any of us realized, if we pursued it. Yikes.

Thanks for this one, too.

Looking stranger, and stranger, as it just occurred that I remember hearing Nazis were stashed throughout South America, all OVER the place, maybe in every country, almost. Clearly they were very much at home with the fascists who were living there already, when they arrived.

[formercia]

9. The Fascists were more than happy to return to their old profession.

One common denominator: Knights of Malta.

After Che was Killed, his body was taken to a KOM hospital where body parts were removed as trophies.

Borghese, Angleton, Bush, all KOM.

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pope-die.html
--snip--

Some Italian political analysts believe that P2 and "Ordine Nuova" may have cooperated with the CIA to bomb a train station in Bologna in 1980 and blame it on Left groups. Many think the CIA has had a long trend of manipulating 'terrorism' in Italy, and that it may have even 'used' the ultra-terror of the Red Brigades to discredit the Italian Communist party: some see Kissinger's hand behind the kidnapping of Premier Aldo Moro. There are clearly overlapping circles of membership between P2, the CIA, and the Knights of Malta, a "sovereign military order descended from the Knights of St. John- Hospitallers," and whose membership in the U.S. has included Bill Casey, Alexander Haig, and Prescott Bush. The Knights, along with Opus Dei, some reactionary Jesuits, and Traditionalists (who resisted the Vatican II Council reforms) form the nexus of the Catholic "hard right wing." In the shadowy world of spookdom, there are many links between this faction of the church, organized crime (the Mafia and Camorra, a Neopolitan 'mafia'), intelligence agencies, arms dealers, and "chivalric" groups working for a united Europe and even a monarchic restoration in some Catholic countries. P2 was also involved with Latin American fascist military coups and the 'death squads' controlled by them; it is even thought that P2 helped transfer Exocet missiles illegally to Argentina during the Falklands War. Klaus Altman, alias Klaus Barbie, was an associate of Gelli and part of the Bolivian military junta ; he was one of many Nazi war criminals smuggled into South America (which had a large German and Italian immigrant community before the war) by the Vatican after WW II.

--snip--

[formercia]

13. I suspected the boys had something to do with the plot against Morales.

This information just re-enforces my suspicions.

[L. Coyote]

14. ROVE on Fresh Air said "the USG found out after the Intelligence Community"

when discussing Iraq, WMD's, Saddam, etc. (Albeit they were on a different topic) I wish Terry Gross had followed up with a question like, "Why don't you consider the "Intelligence Community" part of the United States Government?" This interview was on NPR just this week. It was a choice, unintended revelation.

[formercia]

15. I bet the Intel community had a good laugh over that one.

One of those dirty little secrets.

[fascisthunter]

17. bring down the fascists

weed the fuckers out for good!

[formercia]

18. Long overdue. n/t

[slampoet]

20. Think the world message isn't going Right? The man who captured Che, is investigated for Revolution.

[Judi Lynn]

21. Bolivia: general who captured Che Guevara questioned in destablization plot

Bolivia: general who captured Che Guevara questioned in destablization plot

Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 03/20/2010 - 23:13.

The retired general who captured legendary guerilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara in 1967 was summoned March 19 by Bolivian authorities for questioning in an alleged plot against President Evo Morales. Ex-Gen. Gary Prado Salmón allegedly exchanged "ultrasecret" encrypted e-mail with Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a Bolivian-born Hungarian who was killed in an April 2009 raid by an elite police unit in the eastern city of Santa Cruz. Authorities maintain that Rozsa and two others killed in the raid—an Irishman and an ethnic Hungarian from Romania—were involved in a conspiracy to create a separatist right-wing militia in the eastern Santa Cruz region. Morales said after the raid that a plot to assassinate him had been foiled.

Prado denied any link to an anti-government conspiracy, and said he would refuse to travel from his home in Santa Cruz to La Paz for questioning. He told Fides Radio that his only contact with Rosza came when he asked Prado for an interview, saying he was a foreign journalist. "What 'ultrasecret' communication did I have with Rosza, other than that interview? None," Prado said. "I did not have anything to do with that group."

Also summoned was Prado's son, Gary Prado Araúz, who is running for mayor of Santa Cruz. He said the allegations were worse than a "bad soap opera," and pledged: "They will have to take me by force, because I won't go willingly." Santa Cruz rancher Svonko Matkovic Rivera was also detained for questioning in the case. Prosecutors say his "Z" ranch served as a staging ground for the conspiracy. Matkovic also denies any link to Rosza. (AP, Diariocrítica de Bolivia, March 19; El Dia, Santa Cruz, March 9)

On March 17, former Santa Cruz opposition leader Branko Marinkovic's longtime personal assistant Juan Judelka confirmed that Marinkovic was financing Rozsa's "La Torre" group that is accused of masterminding the conspiracy. Judelka declared under oath before a prosecutor in La Paz that Marinkovic had on several occasions given him money in closed envelopes to deliver to Rozsa. Judelka said, "If I did not testify earlier it was because of pressure by Mr. Marinkovic's lawyer." He said that Rozsa went by the code-name "Germán." The government accuses Santa Cruz opposition leaders of diverting some of the $40 million they collected to finance the regional autonomy campaign into hiring foreign mercenaries in the destabilizaiton effort. (Bolivia Weekly, March 18)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8483

[Judi Lynn]

22. Bolivia: prison party over for García Meza

Bolivia: prison party over for García Meza

Submitted by WW4 Report on Wed, 03/17/2010 - 21:10. The governor of Bolivia's Chonchocoro prison has been sacked after a number of violent incidents at the facility, as well as revelations that former military ruler Luis García Meza was being housed in a luxury cell. Investigators searched the facility after several prisoners were injured in a turf war between inmates that involved a grenade attack and a shooting. They found that García Meza's quarters included a gym, sauna, tennis table, dining room and barbecue grill. He is serving a 30-year term for abuses dating back to his period in power in the early 1980s. Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti said prison governor Col. Gilmar Oblitas and other police officers would face penalties. (BBC News, March 16)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8467

[Judi Lynn]

23. Wikipedia bio: Luis García Meza (Cocaine Coup dictator who hired Nazi Klaus Barbie)

Luis García Meza Tejada (b. August 8, 1932, La Paz, Bolivia) is a former Bolivian dictator. A native of La Paz, he was a career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the reign of dictator Hugo Banzer (1971–78). García Meza became Dictator in 1980.

Prelude to Dictatorship
García Meza became leader of the right-wing faction of the military of Bolivia most disenchanted with the return to civilian rule. Many of the officers involved had been part of the Banzer dictatorship and disliked the investigation of economic and human right abuses by the new Bolivian Congress. Moreover, they tended to regard the decline in popularity of the Carter administration in the United States. as an indicator that soon a Republican administration would replace it—one more amenable to the kind of pro-U.S., more hardline anti-communist dictatorship they wanted to reinstall in Bolivia. Ominously, many allegedly had ties to cocaine traffickers and made sure portions of the military acted at their enforcers/protectors in exchange for extensive bribes, which in turn were used to fund the upcoming coup. In this manner, the narcotraffickers were in essence purchasing for themselves the upcoming Bolivian government.

Coup d'etat
This group pressured President Lydia Gueiler (his cousin) to install Gen. García Meza as Commander of the Army. Within months, the Junta of Commanders headed by Garcia Meza forced a violent coup d'etat -- sometimes referred to as the Cocaine Coup—of July 17, 1980. As portions of the citizenry resisted, as they had done in the fail putsch of November 1979, it resulted in dozens of deaths. Allegedly, the Argentinian army unit Batallón de Inteligencia 601 participated in the coup.

The García Meza Dictatorship, 1980-81
Of extremely conservative anti-communist persuasion, García Meza endeavored to bring a Pinochet-style dictatorship that was intended to last 20 years. He immediately outlawed all political parties, exiled opposition leaders, repressed the unions, and muzzled the press. He was backed by former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie and Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie. Further collaboration came from other European neofascists, most notoriously Ernesto Milá Rodríguez (accused of the Paris synagogue bombing of 1980.<1> Among other foreign collaborators were professional torturers allegedly imported from the notoriously repressive Argentine dictatorship of General Jorge Videla.

The García Meza regime, while brief (its original form ended in 1981), became internationally known for its extreme brutality. The population was repressed in ways as the Banzer dictatorship did. Indeed, some 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed by the Bolivian army and security forces in only 13 months. The administration's chief repressor was the Minister of Interior, Colonel Luis Arce, who cautioned that all Bolivians who may be opposed to the new order should "walk around with their written will under their arms."

The most prominent victim of the dictatorship was the congressman, presidential candidate, and gifted orator Marcelo Quiroga, murdered and "disappeared" soon after the coup. Quiroga had been the chief advocate of bringing to trial the former dictator, General Hugo Banzer (1971–78), for human right violations and economic mismanagement.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Garc%C3%ADa_Meza_Tejada