Argentina - Hossam el-Hamalawy on Diigo

22 Sep 09

21 Sep 09

Secret Detention Centers - General Information

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Argentina DirtyWar Torture Prisons

Although the number of secret detention centers increased rapidly
after the 1976 military coup, with the state investing ample
resouces to promote this principal tool of repression, a few pilot
centers already existed in 1975. The first secret detention center
was set up in the Escuelita de Famaillá in Tucumán province - a small
deserted rural school transformed into a detention center that could
hold up to forty prisoners. It was an experimental model which the
military utilized during the 'Independencia' operation in order to
examine the efficiency of the method.
The initial secret detention centers were limited in size and
functionality since they were located mainly in small houses or
in cellars. After the military coup, on march 24, 1976, the secret
detention centers grew larger and were set up in civilian buildings
(El motel - Tucumán province, Quinta Seré - Buenos Aires province),
in police stations and offices (COT I Martínez, Monte Pelone -
Buenos Aires province), in Army, Navy and Air Force bases (Campo de
Mayo, the Navy Mechanics School, 7th Air Squadron of Morón - Buenos
Aires province), and inside official prisons (La Ribera - Córdoba
province).
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- Many of the secret detention centers were situated in old, run-down,
  and often disused structures. Some centers operated in buildings that
  were still under construction. The chosen sites were not renovated,
  but rather, adapted to their new purpose. The adjustments included
  setting up cells, in those centers where there were none, and installing
  torture rooms. The cells, both the communal ones (the 'lion's cage')
  and the individual ones (the 'tubes', approximately 2 metres by 1 metre),
  were frequently created by partitioning off the sections intended for the
  detainees. As a rule, the prisoners were put up in the least habitable
  areas of the detention centers: basements, attics, sheds, huts, stables,
  vacant garages.
- The units in charge of intelligence obtained their information mainly
  through the methodical torture of the prisoners during interrogation
  sessions. Other sources of information were accusations, betrayals and
  counter-intelligence. On the basis of the information compiled, the
  members of these units decided who was to disappear (be 'arrested' or
  kidnapped), and issued illegal search and target (arrest) orders. The
  orders were then circulated to the operational units, along with the
  necessary background material regarding the 'suspect' - name, home
  address, type of neighbourhood, possible access and escape routes,
  local police station (for requesting a 'free zone', thus preventing
  any likely interference). The operational units planned and carried out
  the abductions. They also conducted searches in people's homes, stealing
  valuable property and destroying everything else. The abducted victims
  were taken directly to a secret detention center, where the intelligence
  units were waiting.
- The prisoners' section, as well as the torture rooms, occupied only part of
  a secret detention center. The rest of the space was usually allocated to
  the following purposes: dormitories for the guards and members of the task
  forces; an officers'/soldiers' lounge; toilets and showers for the staff;
  a kitchen where meals were prepared; a dining-room for the staff; an infirmary for
  treating ill and badly tortured prisoners whose interrogation was still underway
  (the more serious cases were briefly hospitalized in military facilities
  and then returned to the secret center); administrative offices belonging
  to the intelligence units of the task forces - file and documentation office,
  X-rays office, photographic and fingerprint laboratorty

Argentina's Dirty War excerpted from the book State Terrorism and the United States From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism by Frederick H. Gareau

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DirtyWar Argentina USA Imperialism Torture

The period
preceding the coup was one of violence, but nothing approaching
the retaliatory and repressive violence of the dirty war to be
unleashed by the new regime
In late 1980 Videla stepped down
in favor of Army General Roberto Viola. The dirty war was going
well for the army, but the Argentine economy was doing badly.
Under military management/mismanagement, the country fell deeply
in debt, the currency depreciated, wages fell, inflation rose,
and the labor unions started to regain their militancy. An early
casualty was General Viola. After serving less than a year of
his supposed four-year term and after suffering from a mild heart
attack, he was pushed aside in a palace coup in favor of the Army
Commander in Chief, General Leopoldo Galtieri.
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- Dr. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
  and a noted apologist for supporting rightwing dictators, arrived
  in Buenos Aires on August 1, 1981 on the second leg of her tour
  of Latin America.
- In November of 1981 General Galtieri visited Washington. A luncheon
  he hosted at the Argentinian embassy was attended by Secretary
  of Defense Caspar Weinberger, National Security Adviser Richard
  Allen, and Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders. The general
  promised his distinguished guests that Argentina would join the
  United States in its crusade against communism in the Western
  Hemisphere, particularly in Central America. Weinberger and Allen
  were impressed and called him "magnificent." Knowledge
  that he was an alumnus of the School of the Americas must have
  fueled their enthusiasm.
- The report found a contradiction between the military's constant
  disrespect for human beings and its advocacy of what it called
  a Western, Christian life style. A month after the military coup,
  Colonel Juan Bautista Sasiain, who later became Chief of the Federal
  Police, affirmed that "the army values a man as such, because
  the army is Christian."
- The Commission found that the vast majority of the 8,960 victims
  were not only innocent of acts of terrorism, but even of belonging
  to guerrilla organizations. They were trade union leaders struggling
  for higher wages for workers; youngsters who belonged to student
  organizations; journalists who did not support the military regime;
  professionals who belonged to suspicious organizations; young
  pacifists, nuns, and priests who were inspired by the teachings
  of Christ and who took this message to the poor; friends of these
  people; or others whose names were given to the security forces
  out of vengeance or by the kidnapped under torture.
- As impressive as the combined size of
  the groups targeted for direct attack may seem, the reader is
  reminded that state terrorism in Argentina sought to intimidate
  and coerce a much larger audience, namely those sectors of society
  that longed for social change. Furthermore, a quantitative breakdown
  of the victims points to the class nature of this case of state
  terrorism and to the prominence of students as victims. The largest
  percentage (30.2 percent) were blue collar workers; the third
  largest (17.9 percent) white collar workers; and the seventh largest
  (3.8 percent) maids. Students were second, accounting for 21
  percent of the victims and one-third of these were also employed.
- Despite the fact that Jews constitute only one percent of the
  population of Argentina, an estimated ten percent of the victims
  of the dirty war were Jews. That this war had an anti-Semitic
  side is attested to by CONADEP, which devoted a section to illustrate
  this point. It is illustrated, to quote the report, by the "particular
  brutality in the treatment of prisoners of Jewish origin .1117
  Jews were not only tortured, but the torture often took on an
  anti-Semitic form. The torturers painted swastikas on one Jewish
  prisoner's back with a sharp pointed marker. Another torturer
  who called himself the "great fuehrer" made Jewish prisoners
  shout "Hell Hitler." A Jewish woman on her way to an
  excursion in Israel was called by her abductors "a Yid,"
  and subjected to the cattle prod. They wanted information from
  her and from her files on Jews. She was told that the Jewish problem
  was second only to the problem of subversion. Later, they told
  her that her abduction was a mistake and to forget it. In one
  torture center Jews were made to raise one hand and to shout "I
  love Hitler." One prisoner remembered the ordeal of another
  prisoner, a Jew nicknamed "Chango," at the hands of
  his torturer called "Julian the Turk." Julian always
  carried a key ring with a swastika and wore a crucifix around
  his neck. He made Chango bark like a dog, wag as though he were
  a dog wagging his tail, and lick his boots. Chango did very well
  at this. If he didn't, Julian would beat him. CONADEP concluded
  that:
- A CIA analysis of the situation in 1976
  concluded that the labor movement and Peronism were the major
  targets of this early stage of the dirty war. It was also impressed
  with the brutality with which the army and the police waged the
  dirty war.
- Four thousand and seventeen military personnel from Argentina
  were trained by the United States in the period from 1950 to 1979
  38 Actually, Argentina ranked ninth among Latin American countries.
  By 1975, 600 had graduated from the School of the Americas where
  they received training in counterinsurgency warfare. Since that
  year Argentine attendance dropped off dramatically. Notable among
  the School's graduates were Generals Viola and Galtieri, two of
  three Argentine dictators during the dirty war.

Sgt. Victor Ibanez's Testimonial

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Argentina DirtyWar Torture USPuppets

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- A second former military man has
admitted taking part in "death flights" in which political
prisoners were thrown alive into the Atlantic in the 1970s.
"At times there were 20 prisoners, even 300," he said in an
interview published Monday in the newspaper La Prensa. ``When there
were too many'' the prisoners were placed aboard army cargo planes
and helicopters and flown out to sea.
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- "We flew at very low altitude and the flights were never
  registered," Ibanez said. "Prisoners were injected with a very
  strong drug, they were brought over to the door and two officers
  threw them out."
- Ibanez said clandestine detention centers at Camp de Mayo were
  destroyed shortly before a delegation from the human rights group
  Amnesty International visited Argentina after the restoration of
  democratic government in 1983.

The Responsible

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Torture Argentina DirtyWar

The Promotion of Alfredo Astiz

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DirtyWar Argentina Torture Assholes

Argentina military junta members top officers and ministers

Campaigners for US democracy.

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DirtyWar Argentina Military Assholes Torture

Acosta was clearly a psychopath. One minute he could be kissing
a wanted prisoner through the man's hood, overjoyed at seeing him on
the torture table of the ESMA, the next minute twisting the dial
on the electric shock machine higher and higher, his face contorted
with concentration.
Astiz, still baby-faced and in active service at 44 years of age, stood
out among the repressors because of his youth, his heart-stopping good looks,
his bright shock of silken hair, and his zeal for kidnapping, torturing and
murdering defenseless women. Although the Navy credits Astiz with a key role
in the fight against subversion, his known list of victims does not include
a single proven terrorist. Instead, he can claim the deaths of a 17-year-old
Swedish girl [Dagmar Hagelin], whom he shot in the head from behind,
two French nuns, aged 40 and 63, four Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in their
50s and three women in their twenties, none of them linked by any court
to any terrorist activity.
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- "He was very brave when he had to murder unarmed women, but he surrendered
  immediately when he had to fight real soldiers," said Nora Cortiñas,
  another mother who remembers Astiz from when he infiltrated the group.
- Bignone gave explicit orders, in a confidential decree no 2726/83
  to destroy every documentation related to the detained and disappeared,
  Then, he proceeded to organize elections to install a democratic and
  civilian government. Under his leadership, the junta took precautions,
  before the elections, of adopting a general amnesty purporting to immunize
  every member of the military from prosecution for any crimes committed
  in the so called "war against subversion."
- During his time as Navy Mechanics School commander
  Chamorro and his staff were responsible for thousands of tortures,
  lootings of detainees homes, and murders. The Navy Mechanics School
  came to the headlines in 1995 when retired Navy personnel
  who were serving in that base, started a
  series of confessions about throwing hundreds of live detainees
  from Navy planes into the Atlantic ocean.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Germany drops junta prosecutions

Western countries don't mind their nationals being slaughtered sometimes.

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Germany Argentina DirtyWar

27 Aug 09

‭BBC Arabic‬ - ‮العالم‬ - ‮المحكمة العليا في الارجنتين تبيح تدخين الماريجوانا‬

I support the legalization.

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Drugs Argentina humanrights

11 Aug 09

‭BBC Arabic‬ - ‮رياضة‬ - ‮تأجيل دوري كرة القدم في الارجنتين بسبب الازمة المالية‬

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Argentina Capitalism spors GlobalFinancialCrisis

03 May 09

telegraphjournal.com - Argentina to honour longshoremen | BRUCE BARTLETT - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada

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Argentina Dirtywar Workers Strikes humanrights History

Enrique Tabak, a former Argentine who led the protest in 1979, was back in Saint John to announce that the current government of Argentina plans to honour the city's longshoremen for participating in the blockade that kept the dictatorship from bringing a nuclear reactor online.
Within three years of the action on the waterfront in Saint John, the military dictatorship in Argentina fell. The dictatorship was an ally of the apartheid government in South Africa, which also eventually fell - all good things for the world, he said.

20 Dec 08

BBC NEWS | Americas | Argentina suspends Astiz release

An Argentine court has suspended its decision to release Alfredo Astiz and a number of other men charged with murder and torture during its Dirty War.

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Argentina HumanRights Dirtywar Torturer Torture pigs Wankers