Rep. Rogers: Kidnapped Argentinian Babies Distract From Fight Against Al Qaeda

How nice that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican Congressman from Michigan, and 206 of his House GOP colleagues live in a country where political opponents are not disappeared, tortured, or murdered in the dead of night, their children stolen to be brought up by the very intelligence officers that disappeared them.

So maybe Rogers didn't appreciate the criminal absurdity of his comments to the Washington Post on Friday May 13, after a House vote defeated a proposed amendment by Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey (NY) on the declassification of U.S. intelligence files regarding the 1976 Argentine generals coup and the bloody seven year dictatorship that followed. According to the Post, Rogers "said declassifying them would distract U.S. spies from the fight against al-Qaida."

A similar Congressional vote for declassification of documents related to Chile, in a 1999 amendment by Rep. Hinchey, which passed, led to the release of over 24,000 documents, and to accelerated investigations and prosecutions of state crimes in Chile. But the GOP, which voted largely on party lines to defeat the amendment on declassification of documents related to Argentina, made this vote into a bogus stand in support of the "war on terror."

The vote comes only weeks after a trial has opened in Argentina, placing into the dock two former Argentine dictators, Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, for literally stealing babies during what has become known as Argentina's "Dirty War." A recently released document available via National Security Archive shows that the Chilean intelligence attaché to Buenos Aires estimated the number of dead and disappeared in Argentina as over 22,000 between 1975 and 1978 (original document PDF).

The Jurist summarized the baby stealing case against the dictators:

The two are accused in 34 separate cases of infants who were taken from mothers held in clandestine torture and detention centers, the Navy Mechanics School and Campo de Mayo army base. The case was opened 14 years ago at the request of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and includes as defendants five military judges and a doctor who attended to the detainees. The trial is expected to hear 370 witnesses and last up to a year. With the help of the Grandmothers' DNA database, 102 people born to vanished detainees have recovered their true identities.

This is not the first trial of the criminal leaders of the former Argentine junta. Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was sentenced last year to life in prison for crimes against humanity. And just recently a former agent of the Argentine Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE), Miguel Angel Furci, was arrested and charged with human rights abuses, including kidnapping and torture. His trial starts this June. And there have been others brought up on charges and/or convicted as well.

The baby stealing charges are a particularly sickening part of the Dirty War history. As an AP story explained it, "the existence of babies belonging to people who officially no longer existed created a problem for the junta leaders." So the solution was to falsify documents and arrange "illegal adoptions by people sympathetic to the military regime." According to the indictment, there were hundreds of such "adoptions."

American Complicity: You Can Run But You Can't Hide

The U.S. support for the Argentinian junta and Dirty War was part of a larger program known as Operation Condor, which operated throughout the Southern Cone, and was responsible for death squads and torture and a reign of terror throughout Latin America, as the right-wing operations spread northward into Central America in the 1980s.

Even though the U.S. government still seeks to hide documents implicating U.S. intelligence and other state agencies from complicity in the terrible crimes in Argentina, some documents have been released over the years. There's a goodly collection of them at the National Security Archive website.

The documents include a formerly secret transcript of Henry Kissinger's staff meeting during which he ordered immediate U.S. support for the new military regime, and Defense and State Department reports on the ensuing repression. The Archive has also obtained internal memoranda and cables from the infamous Argentina intelligence unit, Battalion 601, as well as the Chilean secret police agency, known as DINA, which was secretly collaborating with the military in Buenos Aires.

The documents record Washington's initial reaction to the military takeover. "I do want to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States," Secretary of State Kissinger ordered his staff after his assistants warned him that the junta would initiate a bloodbath following the coup. According to the transcript, Kissinger's top deputy on Latin America, William Rogers, told him two days after the coup that "we've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long."

Regarding that last quote, what Rogers actually said in full, according to the transcript (PDF) of Kissinger's March 26, 1976 staff meeting, and following upon a discussion of how the regime would need U.S. financial support: "I think also we've got to expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long. I think they're going to have to come down not only on the terrorists but on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties."

Kissinger then tells Rogers, who suggests the U.S. might want to hold off on recognition of the junta, that he wants to "encourage" the generals: "I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States." Rogers then rushes to assure him his reasoning wasn't humanitarian, but simply that he was concerned about "public posture."

The U.S. government is complicit in war crimes that have killed and tortured and disappeared many, many thousands of people, millions going back to Vietnam. But the U.S. population appears to be largely untouched by these crimes, insensate, living in fear, or complacent... it's hard to say. In any case, those in this country, like Rep. Hinchey, and the many fine workers in human and civil rights organizations, will have to keep pounding on these issues.

Note: Eighteen Republicans did vote for Hinchey's amendment, and seven Democrats voted against it. Twenty-three were listed as "Not Voting," including, surprisingly, two liberal Democratic congresswomen from the Bay Area, Zoe Lofgren and Jackie Speier.

Cross-posted from Firedoglake/MyFDL

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture "frustrated by my lack of access to Bradley E. Manning"

The article below is cross-posted from the UN Human Rights Media Center. Note that the UN Special Rapporteur is himself a former torture victim. Juan Méndez is an Argentinean lawyer and human rights activist who is currently Visiting Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of Law, and Co-Chair of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association. In the 1970s, according to his UN bio [MS Word doc], because of his "involvement in representing political prisoners, the Argentinean military dictatorship arrested him and subjected him to torture and administrative detention for more than a year." Hence, I suppose, he has more direct experience with torture and detention than most.

GENEVA (11 April 2011) – United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez, said Monday that despite his repeated requests to visit Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, the United States Government has not granted him unmonitored access to the detainee.

“Since December 2010, I have been engaging the US Government on visiting Mr. Manning, at the invitation of his Counsel, to determine his current condition,” the human rights expert said. “Unfortunately, the US Government has not been receptive to a confidential meeting with Mr. Manning.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, as part of the methods of work for his mandate, requires unimpeded access to all places of detention, where he can hold private, confidential and unsupervised interviews with detainees. The requirement of a private, confidential and unsupervised interview is a standard practice of the Rapporteur’s mandate and ensures the credibility of any interviews that an independent expert holds with detainees or persons who allege that they have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

“I have since last year on several occasions raised serious concern about the conditions of detention of Mr. Manning, who since his arrest in May 2010, has been confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia. I have also urged the authorities to ensure his physical and mental integrity,” said Mr. Méndez.

The Special Rapporteur further requested the consent of the US Government to facilitate a visit to Mr. Manning after Mr. Méndez was approached by Mr. Manning’s defense counsel in February of this year. While the US Government did not give Mr. Méndez a formal response it encouraged the Special Rapporteur to request permission directly from the Brig Commander at Quantico. A request for an ‘official visit’ was made in late March, and the relevant official promised that the request would be considered through the chain of command.

“Even though I have not received an official answer from the Brig Commander, Mr. Manning’s counsel has learned that the request for an official visit has been denied,” Mr. Méndez said. “Presumably, the alternative is a ‘private visit’, the difference between the two is that the latter takes place in the presence of a guard, while an official visit may be unmonitored.”

On Friday, April 8, the Special Rapporteur held a conversation with high authorities in the Departments of Defense and State. Those officials confirmed that Manning could ask to see the Special Rapporteur if he so wished and in that case the US Government would have no objection to a ‘private visit,’ meaning a visit that is monitored by prison officials.

“I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US Government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr. Manning. I understand that Pfc Manning does not wish to waive his right to an unmonitored conversation with me,” the human rights expert said. “My request for a private, confidential and unsupervised interview with Manning is not onerous: for my part, a monitored conversation would not comply with the practices that my mandate applies in every country and detention center visited. In fact, such forms of interview have been used by the Special Rapporteur in, at least, 18 countries over the last 6 years.”

“I raised my concerns, last Friday, with high-ranking officials of the Department of State and Department of Defense of the US Government and have asked them to reconsider their decision not to grant me an ‘official visit’ with Mr. Manning,” he said. “The United States of America has a key role in setting examples on issues concerning my mandate as Special Rapporteur on torture, which makes it a vital partner for engagement.”


“I am letting Mr. Manning know, through his counsel, of this decision by the US Government. I am willing to visit him if he wants to talk to me, even under these conditions, albeit in the understanding that I will continue to insist on an interview without witnesses,” Mr. Méndez said.

The Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, is independent from any government and serves in his individual capacity.

Learn more about the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/torture/rapporteur/index.htm

Check the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm

The State Department had some hard questioning from an AP and a Reuters reporter over U.S. claims re "transparency" given the reluctance to grant the UN rep a private meeting with Manning. The tale is told by Josh Gerstein at Politico (H/T Emptywheel). "LEE" is Matthew Lee of AP; "TONER" is Acting State Department Spokesman Mark Toner:

LEE: Can – you said you’ve been forthright in your discussions of his treatment. It seems to me that the only person who was forthright in discussions of his treatment resigned several days after making those comments. What – can you explain what you mean by you’ve been forthright in terms of his treatment?

TONER: He is being held in legal detention. There’s a legal process underway, so I’m not going to discuss in any more detail than what I – beyond what I’ve just said because there’s a legal process underway.

LEE: So that’s what you mean by forthright?

TONER: I can’t discuss – I can’t discuss his treatment.

LEE: Being forthright is saying nothing because there’s a legal process underway; is that correct?

TONER: That’s not correct at all. And we’ve – we continue to talk to the special rapporteur about his case.

LEE: Well, okay. So if you’ve been – what do you talk to him about?

TONER: I’m not going to talk about --

LEE: He says, “I’d like to visit him and I need to do it privately,” and you say, “No,” and that’s --

TONER: I’m not going to talk about the substance of those conversations. I’d just say we feel we’ve been --

LEE: Well, then I don’t understand how you can say that you’re being forthright about it if you refuse to talk about it. And if you don’t talk about it, at least – forget about what the actual conditions of his treatment are, but if you’re not prepared to talk about your conversations with the special rapporteur, that’s being even less than not being forthright because you’re not telling us what you told him.

TONER: But you understand the legal constraints that I’m operating under because this is an ongoing legal process.

LEE: Right. But --

TONER: He is being held --

LEE: I understand that you’re put in a difficult position where you say that you’re willing, as Arshad noted when the – that you’re – you don’t understand why China is so upset because the U.S. is willing to open up its human rights situation to all kinds of scrutiny --

TONER: And, Matt --

LEE: And then the first example that anyone raises, you’re not.

Emptywheel comments, "It’s not quite Baghdad Bob … quite. But it would be pure comedy gold if it weren’t about our hypocrisy on human rights."

Center for Constitutional Rights released a statement early today regarding Velasco's dismissal of "this politically charged case," noting that the U.S. made it clear in it's statement that “the Department of Justice has concluded that it is not appropriate to bring criminal cases with respect to any other executive branch officials, including those named in the complaint, who acted in reliance on [Office of Legal Counsel] memoranda during the course of their involvement with the policies and procedures for detention and interrogation.” 

“This decision is a cowardly political act by a judge afraid to pursue justice under his country’s own laws. He is hiding behind the fig leaf of the U.S.’s scant seven-page response, but the submission made clear the U.S. has no intention of investigating these crimes or holding higher-level officials accountable for torture. As we saw from the WikiLeaks cables, the U.S. has been pressuring Spain to drop the case and interfering with the independence of judges. A second U.S. torture case remains open in Spain after a higher court ruled it should continue on February 25. Judge Velasco asked for opposing views but then issued his decision without even looking at our detailed submission refuting the U.S. claims. We will fight this decision and continue to demand accountability for torture.”

Andy Worthington's Coverage of Berkeley "Just Say No to Torture" Week Events

Andy Worthington has been reporting on his participation in the City of Berkeley's "Just Say No to Torture" week. As reported earlier, the event was sponsored by World Can't Wait, School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) East Bay/SF, National Lawyers Guild, Boalt Chapter (NLG-Boalt), Code Pink, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee, Progressive Democrats of America, Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, and FireJohnYoo.org.

Andy's latest posting is from day five of the event. (I appeared at some events on day six, and will post on that later.) Here's a bit of Andy's coverage, and one of the posted videos.

Humanizing the prisoners has been a harder sell in the United States than, say, in the UK, where 14 former Guantánamo prisoners — nine British nationals, and five British residents — have told their stories, and, in some cases, appear regularly in public to talk about their experiences, and I was vividly reminded of the power of personal testimony on Thursday morning — Day Five of “Berkeley Says No to Torture” Week — when, as part of a round of media appearances, I was invited onto Rose Aguilar’s “Your Call” show on KALW Public Radio in San Francisco with Justine Sharrock, author of Tortured: When Good Soldiers Do Bad Things (with whom I had previously appeared at a book reading and a panel discussion on torture), and Patricia Isasa, a survivor of the reign of terror in Argentina from the 1970s until 1983.

When she was just 16 years old, Patricia was seized and tortured, and in profoundly moving testimony she described how she had been determined that her torturers would not destroy her. She also spoke animatedly, and with great authority, about how torture does not produce the truth, and only produces lies.

Patricia also spoke with Rose about how, 30 to 35 years after these atrocities, those responsible for the torture in Argentina are finally being held to account for their crimes against humanity, which gave us all the hope that, although the struggle for justice may take decades, it is possible to imagine a world in which the Bush administration’s torturers are finally brought to account.

Patricia’s testimony also reinforced my notion (sharpened by the week’s events) that the battle to hold America’s torturers to account — which is part of the wider struggle against endless war, the sidelining of the Geneva Conventions, and the acceptance of arbitrary detention without charge or trial at Guantánamo — is nothing less than a battle for the soul of America.

After Patricia spoke, Justine and I discussed our work and our aims with Rose, who was a wonderfully engaged presenter. I was pleased to have the opportunity to explain how important it has been this year to travel throughout the UK showing the documentary “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and myself) with former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes (still, like all the former prisoners, regarded as an “enemy combatant”), and how disappointing it was that plans to bring two cleared prisoners to live on the US mainland were shelved by President Obama last year, in the face of Republican opposition, when their presence in the US would have done more than anything to puncture the prevailing myths about the prison holding “the worst of the worst,” and would also have demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, that enormous mistakes were made in rounding up the 779 men held in the prison over the last eight years and nine months.

I’m delighted to report that the whole show is available here as an MP3 (introduction here), and to note that, after the show, Rose asked me to elaborate on some of the points I had made in a further interview that she filmed on a funky little Flip video recorder. This two-part interview, in which I presented a brief synopsis of who the Guantánamo prisoners are, and told a few particularly pertinent stories (of Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti aid worker who is still held, and of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator freed in December 2007) is posted below.

European Union: Protest Sanctions Against Judge Garzón

The following is a press release from Human Rights Watch, dated April 22, 2010, describing the protest of the European Union against possible prosecution and suspension of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who has been investigating crimes of the previous Fascist regime of Francisco Franco. Judge Garzón has previously brought charges against other international figures for torture and crimes against humanity, such as former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

(Brussels) – The president of the European Union Council, Herman van Rompuy, and EU member states should express their concern over the prosecution and the potential suspension of Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain for investigating Franco-era abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.

Garzón, of Spain’s National Audience tribunal, faces trial and suspension from his duties for investigating alleged cases of illegal detention and forced disappearances committed in Spain between 1936 and 1952. A Supreme Court investigating magistrate, Luciano Varela, has ruled that by intentionally bypassing Spain's 1977 amnesty law for "political acts," Garzón committed an abuse of power.

"Garzón sought justice for victims of human rights abuses abroad and now he's being punished for trying to do the same at home," said Lotte Leicht, EU advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The decision leaves Spain and Europe open to the charge of double standards and undermines the EU's credibility and effectiveness in the fight against impunity for serious crimes."

Varela’s decisions are expected to lead to a criminal prosecution of Garzón, and as a result, Spain’s General Council of the Judiciary (Consejo General del Poder Judicial) will consider Garzón’s temporary suspension.

However, Garzón’s decision not to apply Spain’s amnesty is supported by international conventional and customary law, which impose on states a duty to investigate the worst international crimes, including crimes against humanity. The sanctions against Garzón are not only a blow to the families of victims of serious crimes in Spain, Human Rights Watch said. The sanctions also risk undermining the EU’s collective credibility and effectiveness in seeking justice for current human rights crimes, be they in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Sri Lanka.

Under international law, governments have an obligation to ensure that victims of human rights abuses have equal and effective access to justice, as well as an effective remedy – including justice, truth, and adequate reparations – after they suffer a violation. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Spain ratified in 1977 – before adopting the amnesty law - specifically states that governments have an obligation “to ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms … are violated shall have an effective remedy.”

In 2008, the UN Human Rights Committee, in charge of monitoring compliance with the ICCPR, called on Spain to repeal the 1977 amnesty law and to ensure that domestic courts do not apply limitation periods to crimes against humanity. In 2009, the Committee against Torture also recommended that Spain “ensure that acts of torture, which also include enforced disappearances, are not offences subject to amnesty” and asked Spain to “continue to step up its efforts to help the families of victims to find out what happened to the missing persons, to identify them, and to have their remains exhumed, if possible.”

The European Court of Human Rights held in 2009 (Ould Dah v France No. 13113/03, Decision on admissibility) as a general principle, that an amnesty law is generally incompatible with states’ duty to investigate acts of torture or barbarity.

On the other side of world events, and the globe, Scott Horton reminds us that justice for past crimes against humanity is not an impossibility:

Reynaldo Bignone served as Argentina’s head of state from 1982-83. He was involved in the military coup d’état that brought down Isabel Perón in 1976. Together with a number of other leaders of the military government that followed Perón, he was recently tried in Buenos Aires on charges that he authorized the torture and mistreatment of prisoners, kidnapping, and the operation of extralegal prisons, together with other crimes against humanity....

Bignone was convicted and received a 25-year sentence this week. His plea that he be allowed to serve his term under house arrest was denied because of the gravity of his crimes. He was ordered transferred to a prison outside of Buenos Aires....

The case of Reynaldo Bignone may make instructive reading for former Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Deputy Director Steven Kappes. Cheney is in retirement, and Kappes is preparing to leave the agency. Both should be cautious about any future travel plans.

One imagines that Judge Garzón has read this news with some satisfaction, as he led international prosecutions of former members of the Argentinian military back in the 1990s.