Purging the Legal System of Dictatorship Accomplices

[Judi Lynn]

Purging the Legal System of Dictatorship Accomplices
By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sept 6, 2011 (IPS) - As human rights cases from Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship move ahead in the courts, cases of judges and prosecutors who were accomplices in the crimes are coming to light.

Thanks to the memory of witnesses and survivors of the "dirty war", as well as the tireless efforts of human rights organisations, judges and prosecutors implicated in dictatorship-era human rights crimes have generally been kept from taking part in the trials.

And information provided by the survivors and witnesses is now being used to gradually purge these judges and prosecutors from the legal system.

The most recent case is that of Otilio Romano, a federal court judge in the western province of Mendoza, who despite numerous accusations against him managed to stay in his post until late August. There was evidence that Romano was involved in 76 cases of kidnapping, torture and forced disappearance between 1975 and 1983. Nevertheless, he evaded legal action for years.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105006

[Peace Patriot]

1. It's important to realize how difficult it has been for the Left

to organize and win elections in Argentina and all over Latin America--where the Leftist democracy movement has swept elections over the last decade--in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras (until the U.S.-supported coup) and other places--with war criminals like this still embedded in positions of power and fascists getting support and funding from the U.S. government. It has take a HUGE peaceful uprising of the People, massive grass roots organization and motivation and passionate commitment to change, and it has taken overcoming immense suffering and grief.

It is something WE need to do--overcome our disempowerment and our grief, throw out the rigged corporate voting machines (--the way the Left won in Latin America was to FIRST attend to the honesty of the vote counting) and get reform under way, and start purging the war criminals, war profiteers and other corpo-fascist malefactors from our government.

THINK of all the judges that war criminals Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld put in power, for instance. We will be cursed with their rulings for decades to come. It's deeper and wider than just the judges, though. We have had the CIA running things since they murdered JFK, and even though they had a bit of a spat with Cheney-Rumsfeld, they are back in the saddle today, with Panetta and Petraeus playing musical chairs as they end that little internal war and get everybody back on the same page, for a more efficient war machine.

We have BIG problems that often look insoluble--but I'm sure that, ten years ago, there were plenty of Latin Americans who felt despair and who could not have envisioned the remarkable, transformed political landscape of today in LatAm. We need to take heart from this--and learn important lessons from it (such as the importance of honest, transparent vote counting). It CAN be done. Latin America is showing us the way.

[Judi Lynn]

2. It would be sublime to be able to believe the long reign of filth and terror here

might actually be closer to ending than we can imagine.

The right-wing has been working overtime to seize control of the whole country, and the rest of the world for decades, and not meeting the resistance it deserves.

One murderous asshole overstepping the line in Venezuela kicked it all off with El Caracazo, creating a debacle they knew they would NEVER allow to happen again. This happened around the time Chile was overcoming its bondage to Pinochet, and his ghouls.

Just one ray of illumination would kick it all off here, just one moment the fascists could never take back, never overcome, and we'll be off to the races. It could happen, as people learn more about what has really been controlling us all, all these deceitful, violent years.

[ocpagu]

3. Judiciary systems served as important foundations of the dictatorial regimes...

...installed in Latin America in the 1960s and on.

Their support for the coups and the military juntas had the same importance of the support given by mass media and business conglomerates. We often remember the role of generals and top-officials of the juntas and ask for their punishment, but it's important to remember there is a large number of individuals and institutions directly linked to the junta's crimes which had not even faced public criticism, much less being investigated.

In Brazil, our most renowned jurist and judge, Pontes de Miranda, said, after the coup in 1964, that "in order to save the Constitution, the military had to tear it apart". That phrase, although clearly ridiculous, became a "consensus" among Brazilian judges.

Even more obscure to the public, however, is the role of private companies and multinationals in financing the dictactorship repression aparatus. In Brazil, this was done through the "Operação Bandeirante". Operação Bandeirante was, officially, an information and investigation center set by the Brazilian Army. In fact, it was the unofficial coordination center of death squads, responsible for torturing and killing hundreds of civilians.

Institutions and companies responsible for financing Operação Bandeirantes include Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Camargo Corrêa, Grupo Objetivo, Ultragás and Bank Bradesco. Among the individuals funding Operação Bandeirantes are the banker Amador Aguiar and the Danish businessman Henning Albert Boilesen. Boilesen even took part in torture sections of leftists himself. He invented a torture-device named after him, the "Pianola de Boilesen" a kind of keyboard which emits electrical shocks.

Thanks Judi. Recommended.