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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-12-10 03:02 PM
Original message
Guatemalan planned his own murder, probe finds
Edited on Tue Jan-12-10 03:13 PM by Judi Lynn
January 12, 2010
Guatemalan planned his own murder, probe finds

Guatemala City, Jan 12, 2010 (EFE via COMTEX) -- The Spanish jurist who chairs Guatemala's International Commission Against Impunity said Tuesday that prominent attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg planned his own murder.

The May 10, 2009, crime ignited a political scandal in the Central American country, as Rosenberg pointed the finger at President Alvaro Colom in a posthumously released video, but Carlos Castresana told a press conference in Guatemala City that the evidence shows the lawyer "decided to put an end to his life." "In the investigations we have conducted up to now, we have found no indication of the participation of the president" in the murder, the Spaniard said.

Based on an analysis of cell phone calls, Castresana said, investigators concluded that Rosenberg asked his cousins, businessmen Francisco and Jose Valdes Paiz, to arrange a contract killing without telling them the identity of the intended victim.

The Valdes brothers in turn instructed one of their bodyguards, Nelson Wilfredo Santos Estrada, to recruit gunmen to carry out the deed, the jurist said.

More:
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/01/12/4568726.htm

http://totheroots.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2009/06/guatemala-rodrigo-rosenberg.jpg

http://s.wsj.net.nyud.net:8090/public/resources/images/OB-DQ930_guatem_G_20090512231534.jpg
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-12-10 03:06 PM
Response to Original message
1. Guatemalan lawyer arranged own slaying, U.N. panel says
Guatemalan lawyer arranged own slaying, U.N. panel says
January 12, 2010 -- Updated 1954 GMT (0354 HKT)

CNN) -- A lawyer who left a videotape saying Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom would be responsible if anything happened to him masterminded his own death last year, a special United Nations commission said Tuesday after an eight-month investigation.

Colom had nothing to do with the killing, said Carlos Castresana, head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.

"Rodrigo Rosenberg, for some reason, decided to put an end to his life," Castresana said at a televised news conference.

Prominent Guatemalan brothers Francisco Jose Valdez Paiz and Jose Estuardo Valdez Paiz hired hit men at the behest of Rosenberg, who told them he was being threatened by someone, Castresana said.

The two brothers, who own a pharmaceutical company, had been cousins of Rosenberg through a previous marriage and did not know that he was the target of the assassination, Castresana said.

Rosenberg fed information to the hit squad leader that led to his own death, giving descriptions of what the target looked like and where he would be.

More:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/12/guatemala.lawyer.slaying/index.html
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-12-10 04:12 PM
Response to Original message
2. U.N.: Man Plotted Own Death to Frame Prez
GUATEMALA CITY, Jan. 12, 2010
U.N.: Man Plotted Own Death to Frame Prez
Lawyer who Appeared in Posthumous Video Accusing Guatemalan President of his Murder Apparently Hired Hit Men who Killed Him

(AP) U.N. investigators say a Guatemalan lawyer who appeared in a posthumous video accusing the country's president of his murder actually contracted the hit men who killed him.

Attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg made a video before he was slain charging that Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom would be involved if he were killed.

U.N. investigator Carlos Castresana says Rosenberg asked cousins of his first wife to help him contact a hit man. Castresana is head of a special investigation group that was invited by the government to probe the May 10 murder.

Castresana says evidence shows Rosenberg bought two cell phones: one to communicate with his killers, another to leave himself threatening messages.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/12/world/main6088268.shtml
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-12-10 04:46 PM
Response to Original message
3. I don't know. While I appreciate the work of this commission, and it certainly seems to have been
exhaustive, this still smells like a covert ops sting--the likely culprit (if true), the CIA. I have NO evidence to base this on, and I am NOT familiar with the evidence assembled by the UN commission. I am just speculating. But there ARE some peripheral facts and events that make me suspicious.

1. The obvious CIA covert op out of Miami--this character, "Guido," trying to get a suitcase jammed with bricks of U.S. dollars ($700,00) through customs in the airport in Buenos Aires, getting caught, flying back home to Miami and then claiming that the money was from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, to aid her campaign for president; "Guido" becoming the "witness" in an absurd DOJ/US attorney case against some other businessmen (charged with "failing to report to Albert 'torture memo' Gonzales" as "agents of a foreign government" (Venezuela)). The Miami Hairball made hairball headlines out of this case for months. Oh, the corrupt leftists in Latin America!

2. The rightwing military coup in Honduras. One of the coup generals said that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." Looking at a map, we see leftist governments covering almost all of South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile) , and about half of Central America--the latter having been recently elected in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and, until the coup, in Honduras. Universal health care, free education through college, rejection of U.S. dictation, assertion of real democracy and sovereignty are creeping up from the "Southern Cone" through Central America almost to our border, to slay the dragon of U.S.-enforced Corporate Rule. Soon we will have Venezuelan "commies" under all our beds! Strategically, likely the Pentagon is thinking "circle the wagons" in the northern South America/Central America/Caribbean region, using the Pentagon's client state, Colombia, to net in Venezuela's north coast oil region. The CIA likely has all kinds of psyops and covert ops aimed at toppling these newer leftist governments in Central America (using the now fascist-run "lily pad" of Honduras--as they did during the Reagan horrors), and putting together a fascist secessionist group in northern Venezuela to declare their "independence" and "invite" the U.S./Colombia militaries into northern Venezuela, to "support" their "freedom fight"--or some such scenario. The US military is already harassing this area of Venezuela (where all their main oil reserves and faciliteis are located) with illegal overflights.

So, was Guatemala to be the next "domino"? They toppled democracy in neighboring Honduras, and installed a brutal rightwing coup. Was the method in Guatemala to be slander (as they have used on the leftist leaders in Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador and others)? And was the goal to "prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States," i.e., part of an overall military plan to re-assert U.S. domination of at least this "circle the wagons" region of Latin America, on our "doorstep"?

4. The murder of David Kelly, British UN weapons inspector, BBC whistleblower on the Iraq War (four days after Valerie Plame was outed by the Bushwhacks). I have read the facts of that case, in all their detail, and I am 99% certain it was murder made to look like suicide, and so do a lot of other people, including many forensics experts in England and members of Parliament (who are still trying to get a proper inquest).

I am sure that it has struck others that this explanation of Rodrigo Rosenberg's death strains credulity. Is it possible that he arranged his own murder? Well, yes. Anything is possible. Is there evidence that he did? Clearly--according to the UN commission (and I have no reason to disbelieve them). But, as we all know, there are very sophisticated techniques and very skilled people available for making murder look like suicide and for creating all sorts of psyops illusions, to promote war, to protect war and corporate criminals and so on. This looks to me like a candidate for such an operation--designed to discredit the newly elected leftist president of Guatemala (force him to resign or whatever) in the U.S. effort to "circle the wagons" in Central America with a blockade of rightwing-controlled countries who will cooperate with U.S. military action against Venezuela, and support U.S. "free trade for the rich," the U.S. 'war on drugs,' World Bank/IMF looting, and all the things that Chavez and the other Bolivarian countries have challenged, and that Central America was beginning to challenge (for instance, through the ALBA trade group).

The CIA seems to have lost some of its former skill under Bushwhack rule. This plot fell apart (as to toppling the leftist president of Guatemala). Their Miami caper was ludicrously transparent. They couldn't pull off coups in Venezuela (2002) and Bolivia (2008). They couldn't get rid of Rafael Correa in Ecuador with that "miracle laptop" business (wild allegations that Correa and Chavez were helping the FARC guerillas to obtain a "dirty bomb"). Are they losing their "touch," or is democracy in Latin America just catching up with U.S. bad intentions in the region, and nobody believes their bullshit any more?

In any case, this one smells, and I hope that people who are in a position to do so, investigate it further.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-17-10 10:15 AM
Response to Original message
4. Lawyer Ordered Own Assassination; Clears Guatemalan President
Lawyer Ordered Own Assassination; Clears Guatemalan President
16 January 2010 Comments Posted by Nel

Guatemala President Alvaro Colom (pictured) breathed a sigh of relief after investigations found out that lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano orchestrated his own death, contrary to the latter’s claim in a video message that the President was out to kill him.

Guatemala: murdered lawyer planned his own death
Submitted by WW4 Report on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 04:16. An investigation by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) has concluded that activist attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg planned his own assassination. The findings by the UN-affiliated agency apparently exonerate President Alvaro Colom of any implication of complicity in the lawyer's death.

Carlos Castresana told a Jan. 12 press conference in Guatemala City that CICIG found it was Rosenberg himself who "who decided to put an end to his life" by hiring assassins to shoot him down while riding his bicycle in a suburb on May 10, 2009. In a video produced by Rosenberg and released posthumously, he blamed President Colom and First Lady Sandra Torres de Colom.

Some 300 officials participated in the investigation that included analyzing more than 100,000 telephone calls intercepted from 14 different numbers, according to Castresana. Videos, photographs, and documents were also presented to support the CICIG's conclusions.

Investigators also relied on testimony from two persons implicated in Rosenberg's death, his cousins Franciso José Valdés Paíz and José Estuardo Valdés Paíz. It appears that the 47-year-old lawyer asked the pair to contract a hit-man to carry out the murder of an unknown extortionist. Allegedly, they did not know that the intended victim was Rosenberg himself. The Valdéz Paíz brothers are now charged as masterminds of the crime.

In the posthumous video, Rosenberg claimed that he had proof to show who had murdered his clients Khalil Musa and Marjorie Musa. However, Castresana errors were made in an investigation into the murder of the Musa couple, and that looking into the case now will require "archaeology." (Spero News, Jan. 12)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8205

Some of the reports I have seen say Rosenberg had recently lost his mother, had been divorced by his wife, his client was in deep trouble with the law, and was murdered, along with his daughter, (who was Rosenberg's girlfriend) by unknown killers. He blamed the President of Guatemala for those murders.
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