Argentina, Brazil, Operation Condor

The Mercopress has the story of dissident "tracking" stations for Argentina, staged in Brazil (Argentina under Plan Condor had tracking stations in Brazil, Jan 7, 2008):

The 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship held information bases in San Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which were meant to “detect people connected to the subversion”, according to a legal prosecution started in Argentina, reported the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper on Sunday.

The probe, which investigated the existence of Argentine bases in neighboring countries during the 1970s and 80s under the framework of the Cóndor Plan, a military scheme organized by Latin American regimes in the 70s and 80s to eliminate political dissidents, was opened at the request of Argentina’s prosecutor office.

The case concluded last December 18, when one policeman and seven military officers, among them former Army commander Cristino Nicolaides, were convicted of human rights violations.

The document, based on the testimony of the Argentine Army Intelligence Battalion 601 prison warden Néstor Norberto Cendón, revealed the Argentine bases were connected to this military unit, an interrogation and torture centre located in Buenos Aires city.

The bases were in charge of intercepting members of the Montoneros guerilla group in foreign territory, and of keeping the Argentine military authorities informed of their movements.

Cendón declared the Army’s intelligence also had bases in Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay as part of a military operation against the Montoneros, called “Murciélago,” as part of the Cóndor Plan.

A week ago, another Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, published declarations by General Agnaldo Del Nero Augusto admitting the neighboring country’s collaboration in the detention of Argentine and other leftist militants as part of the Cóndor Plan.

Del Nero Augusto denied that Argentine detainees had been killed by his government but admitted Brazil’s collaboration in intelligence and training tasks with other dictatorships.

“We didn’t kill. We detained them and handed them over. That’s no crime”, he said, adding that “when we were tipped that a suspect was coming into Brazil the praxis was to arrest him and send him back to his country of origin. I believe that is what happened with the two Argentine-Italians, both Montoneros”.

General Del Nero Augusto was defiant about the actions of the time, “they were members of a communist subversive organization trying to enter the country. What crime is to have them detained?” The detainees were handed to Argentina where they joined the long list of thousands of disappeared.

The Brazilian general said the Condor plan was a “necessary” response to the Revolutionary Coordination Junta of subversive groups from the area which was organized in Paris following the downfall of Chilean Socialist president Salvador Allende.

“We were forced to react” against an organization which included Argentina’s ERP, Uruguay’s Tupamaros; Chile’s MIR and Bolivia’s ELN insisted General Del Nero Augusto.

However he underlined that the Brazilian participation in the Plan Condor was “limited to collaborating with information, handing over foreign agents and monitoring subversives”. The general said that “terrorist groups ignore and violate the rule of the law yet they demand democratic guarantees”.

“Our mistake was not declaring the state of war, just saying “we’re at war” and that would have been the end of all of it”.

A few days later, another Brazilian military officer played down his country’s participation in the Cóndor Plan, and argued that they would not have deported the rebels if they had known they were to be killed.

Italians Pursue Operation Condor Participants

The Mercopress (South America) has this report from Christmas day:

Prosecutors in Italy have issued arrest warrants for 140 people who participated in the South American dictatorships coordinated repression of the seventies, which was known as Operation Condor.

The list includes the former Argentine dictator General Jorge Videla, former head of the Argentine Navy Admiral Emilio Massera and former Uruguayan president Juan María Bordaberry.

Of the long list some have died such as Chile’s notorious Augusto Pinochet and one of them Captain Jorge Fernandez Troccoli from the Uruguayan Navy intelligence services was arrested in Salerno, where he was retired, reported the Italian press.

Troccoli is accused of the disappearance of four people and will be transferred to Rome to face questioning on December 27.

Under Operation Condor, six governments (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) worked together from the 1970s to hunt down and kill left-wing opponents. Italian authorities have been looking into the plot since the late 1990s.

The investigation followed complaints by relatives of South American citizens of Italian origin who had disappeared. Judge Luisann Figliola issued the arrest warrants on Monday, following a request from state prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo.

Those named face charges ranging from lesser crimes to kidnappings and multiple murders. Under Operation Condor the military governments agreed to co-operate in sending teams into other countries to track, monitor and kill their political opponents.

As a result, many left-wing opponents of military regimes in the region who had fled to neighboring countries found themselves hunted down in exile. The Italian Justice is expected to begin in the coming days procedures for the extradition of those people in the list, according to the Italian press.

The list of suspects allegedly includes 61 from Argentina; 32 from Uruguay; 22 from Chile; 13 from Brazil; 7 from Bolivia; 7 from Paraguay and 5 from Peru.

Peter Popham on The Independent adds these details to the story today:

...Among the thousands of deaths of which they are accused is the assassination of Orlando Leletier, a former minister in Salvador Allende's Chilean government, in a 1976 car bomb in Washington....

...The plot between the six countries, details of which have emerged only slowly since the collapse of the military regimes, is said to have been cooked up in Santiago in 1975 when leaders of the military intelligence services from each of the countries met to co-ordinate their extra-legal efforts to wipe out their Marxist and socialist opponents. It was a bid to systematise efforts already under way to bolster and cement in power right-wingers whose first success had been the overthrow and murder of Allende, the first Communist to be elected head of state of a western country, by Pinochet in 1973.

Like the Chilean coup d'etat that preceded it, Operation Condor enjoyed at least the tacit support of the US. The enemies were ostensibly armed left-wing guerrillas, but in fact a wide range of opponents were "disappeared", ranging from activists and trade unionists to intellectuals and artists, often with their families. At least 30,000 people are believed to have been eliminated in the Argentinian Dirty War alone.

Operation Condor was wound up in 1983 after the collapse of the Argentine military junta....

Operation Condor - Argentine government officials brought to justice

The Buenos Aires Herald notes that 17 former officials -- "Antonio Domingo Bussi, Eduardo Albano Harguindeguy, Cristino Nicolaides, Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, Santiago Omar Riveros, Eduardo Daniel De Lío, Carlos Humberto Caggiano Tedesco, Ramón Genardo Díaz Bessone, Antonio Vañek, Juan Pablo Saá, Carlos Tragant, Bernardo Menéndez, Jorge Carlos Olivera Rovere, Antonio Guañabens Perelló, Carlos Landoni and Ernesto Arturo Alais ... are going to be judged for crimes against humanity committed in the framework of Operation Condor".

George Washington University's National Security Archive has recently additions to their collection on Operation Condor, specifically, Kissinger's green-lighting of the Argentine operations -- "If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better."