Hossam el-Hamalawy's Library tagged dirtywar →  View Popular

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

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.

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."

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.

"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.

"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.

Venezuela is supplying cheap oil to Honduras, 60 percent of whose people live in poverty, so Zelaya had reason to be grateful. But Zelaya is no radical in the Chavez or Morales mould. He is a liberal elected to the presidency via the system of alternating power with the conservatives that has operated in the country for decades.

The 1982 constitution – which Zelaya wanted to change – was passed under the close scrutiny of the US ambassador in Honduras at the time, John Negroponte. He is a sinister figure, who later became US ambassador to Iraq after the invasion, and then Bush’s National Security Adviser.

US military aid to Honduras increased from $4m to $77m on his watch, and the US military base at Soto Cano is his legacy.

It is that connection that probably explains the Honduran coup. It clearly took President Obama by surprise. At first he added his voice to the Organisation of American States and the United Nations in condemning the coup and demanding the return of Zelaya.

Given Honduras’s absolute dependence on the US that should have been the end of the matter. But Zelaya has still not been able to return and representatives of the new “de facto” government of Roberto Micheletti have visited Washington under the auspices of Hillary Clinton and been well received by, among others, ex-presidential candidate John McCain.

At the same time Clinton has set up negotiations between Micheletti and Zelaya. This has given the new regime legitimacy it had no right to and delayed the return of Zelaya that the mass movement continues to demand.

Negroponte, his equally sinister colleague Otto Reich – George Bush’s sometime adviser on Latin America – and John McCain now reappear on the scene. All of them have worked closely with a Venezuelan lawyer called Robert Carmona-Borjas who was one of the architects of the failed 2002 coup against Chavez.

McCain in particular has been campaigning against Zelaya because of his objection to the privatisation of Honduras’s mass media. And both he and Reich speak for the interests of the giant media corporation AT&T.

Honduras itself is not very significant strategically. But if the Bush clique can push Obama into negotiation with the new right wing regime there, with what seems like the willing help of Hillary Clinton, this will lay the foundation for a new US strategy in the region – and for its increasing involvement in Latin American affairs.