Victims of 'death flights': Drugged, dumped by aircraft – but not forgotten

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Independent

Victims of 'death flights': Drugged, dumped by aircraft – but not forgotten
Pilots on trial in Argentina for first time in biggest ever human rights prosecution
Ed Stocker
Buenos Aires
Tuesday 27 November 2012

Almost 30 years since Argentina's return to democracy, a Buenos Aires courthouse will today hear charges against 68 former officials accused of a multitude of crimes during the country's "Dirty War", in which tens of thousands of Argentinians died at the hands of the last military dictatorship.

In what has been called the largest human rights trial in Argentina's history, the defendants will stand trial for their roles in cases of kidnapping, torture and murder perpetrated between 1976 and 1983, as well as the regime's notorious "death flights" – the practice of drugging opponents and dropping them from aircraft over the Rio de la Plata and Atlantic Ocean.

The hearing, which is expected to last two years, will summon more than 800 witnesses, and will focus on a range of crimes associated with the Naval School of Mechanics (Esma), a training centre in the capital that became the deadliest of Argentina's clandestine detention camps during the junta.

The 68 defendants – all ex-armed forces and police except for two civilians – are implicated in crimes against 789 victims, a third of whom survived their ordeals. Most of the defendants have never been tried before.










Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/victims-of-death-flights-drugged-dumped-by-aircraft--but-not-forgotten-8360461.html

[Scurrilous]

1. Good to hear this.

K & R

[freshwest]

5. +1

[RoccoR5955]

2. We will find out some day

that the same sort of thing was done here in the US about 11 years ago, but it's been covered up so much, that they call you a nut for believing that it was a setup. They'll probably censor this with one of their "juries" for even hinting at it.

[Tumbulu]

3. I look forward to the days when Bushco

are prosecuted. Even if it takes 30 years. Better late than never.

[loudsue]

23. Me, too. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld...all of them need to be tried for war crimes.

Truly the lowest point in American history.

[Gore1FL]

4. Who of note is missing from 2002? n/t

[ret5hd]

6. my guess (without even knowing what he is talking about)...

is that if it was a "person of note" no such thing would have happened. That kind of thing happens to nobodys.

[eomer]

8. Eleven years ago would be 2001.

The most notable event that occurred about eleven years ago would be 9/11.

[jeggus]

29. Nah, Ya' Think?

[Kaleva]

32. There's a thread about you in Meta. You might want to go check it out.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

33. Too late

[Moosepoop]

12. Do you think that Skinner, EarlG & Elad

put people on death flights? If so, you are indeed a nut.

If not, who would be censoring your post with one of *their "juries"*??

[patrice]

16. +1

[jeggus]

28. Yes it was a huge cover up..............

And I suspect I will be the only one who reads your post!

[Judi Lynn]

37. It has been kept hidden, but the Catholic Church sanctioned this Dirty War, too.

The chaplains and the “death flights”

New evidence is coming to light about the role of state-funded chaplains in supporting the Argentine junta's reign of terror from 1976 to 1983. Chaplains in the police and the military reassured those who were haunted by the screams of the people they abducted, tortured and murdered — and helped them carry on. One chaplain has even been convicted for particpating in these crimes.

President Juan Peron angered the Catholic Church by legalising divorce and prostitution and in 1955 he was excommunicated by Pope Pius XII. He was then deposed by a military junta. The Vatican quickly concluded a military concordat with the generals. This agreement set up a special chaplaincy for the military, which separated the military personnel and their families from the dioceses where they lived.

~snip~
All levels of the military chaplaincy urged cooperation with the junta and provided religious reasons for doing so. The evidence is massive and this is merely a small selection:

● The head of the military chaplaincy, Archbishop Adolfo Servando Tortolo had a long meeting with the junta on the very day of the 1976 coup that launched the Dirty War. As he left the meeting Tortolo urged the population to "cooperate in a positive way" with the new government. [8]

● Bishop Emilio Graselli was Tortolo's secretary and kept a list for the military chaplaincy of people who had been disappeared, marking with a cross the names of those confirmed dead by the military.

● After the coup Bishop Victorio Bonamin, head chaplain for the army, asserted “that when a military man is carrying out his repressive duty, ‘Christ has entered with truth and goodness,’ ” [9]

● At the trial of former chief police chaplain for the province of Buenos Aires Christian Von Wernich several former prisoners described how Father Von Wernich used his office to win their trust before passing information to police torturers and killers in secret detention centres. They testified that he also attended several torture sessions and absolved the police of blame, telling them they were doing God’s work. [10]

● According to naval officer Adolfo Scilingo, Father Alberto Ángel Zanchetta who served as a chaplain at ESMA, “the Auschwitz of Argentina”, consoled the officers who were stricken with anguish. Their tasks ranged from routine torture and executions to participation in “death flights”, in which prisoners were drugged, stripped naked and pushed from planes to drown in the ocean below. After his first flight, Scilingo was wracked by guilt, but the military chaplain told him that this was a “Christian and non-violent” way to die and justified it by citing the Biblical parable about separating the wheat from the chaff. [11]

More:
http://www.concordatwatch.eu/showtopic.php?org_id=11781&kb_header_id=48350

[bitchkitty]

7. A third of whom survived?

That is amazing!

I remember reading about this. I must say that I never thought that this and other crimes like it would be prosecuted. This is good news!

[patrice]

15. Neither did I, but I think what has happened was because of the Mothers of the Disappeared

who went and stood in a certain plaza, with pictures of their disappeared family members, every day for decades.

[struggle4progress]

9. ... the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines ...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/index.htm

[Curmudgeoness]

10. What sick, demented mind

came up with this way of disposing of the opposition? They couldn't just kill them and toss them into the ocean?

The only good thing about this twisted way of torturing them before they die is that some lived. Good for the good guys, not so good for the bad guys.

[robinlynne]

17. why would killing them and tossing them into the ocean be better? And yes they did (kill people and

throw them into the ocean.)

[Curmudgeoness]

24. No, they didn't kill them.

Well, not immediately. The article said that they were "drugged" and thrown from the planes. Which would mean that they may have been a little conscious when tossed. I assume this because it also said that about 1/3 of these people survived (somehow). This was obviously meant as not just a killing, but also as a torture before they died.

I say just kill them and toss them because, personally, I would rather just die quick than to die slowly and painfully.

[robinlynne]

26. Some were drugged. Others were tortured to death. Many different things happened during the mlitary

reigns in South America.

[Blue_Tires]

25. maybe it's a urban legend

but wasn't that originally used by the OSS or CIA?

[Curmudgeoness]

27. I have not heard this

and, what a surprise, I find nothing in a quick search about it. But it really doesn't matter....the mind that comes up with extraordinary tortures is a sick mind. And I am sure that the OSS and the CIA have a few sick minds among them.

[Judi Lynn]

36. It would take some time to do the searching, but I have heard for years that dropping "enemies"

from aircraft was used in VietNam (have hard it was used by CIA-connected Cuban "exiles" working there) as well as throughout Central America, and of course, in South America, as in Argentina and Chile, particularly.

Don't know if this helps at all, but it is interesting:

~snip~

A report from the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence succinctly sums up the claims and allegations made about Nazi involvement in the CIA’s formative years.

* CIA, and its predecessor organizations such as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-45), the Strategic Services Unit (SSU, 1945-46), and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG, 1946-47), employed German intelligence personnel as sources of information. Afterward, the CIA sponsored the new West German intelligence service, an organization under the control of officers of the defunct German general staff. The ranks of the organization sheltered many officers of the German SS and SD whose loyalty to the new West German Government remained in doubt.

* CIA and its predecessor organizations employed former collaborators of the Third Reich, primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe, initially as sources of information and later as operational assets for activities behind the Iron Curtain.

* CIA, including the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC, 1948-52), brought Germans and East Europeans to the United States to provide detailed information on the Soviet Union.

* CIA, including OPC, formed “secret armies” from various émigré groups in Europe and trained them in the United States. The ranks of these groups included numerous former collaborators of Nazi Germany, and some of these people remained active in other CIA projects.

* CIA evacuated Nazi war criminals and collaborators through “rat lines” in southern Europe, allowing them to escape justice by relocating them incognito in South America.

* CIA abused its legal authority to bring Soviet and Soviet Bloc defectors and other persons of interest to the United States.

* CIA covered up its these activities from Congressional and other Federal investigators.

Raw Story (http://s.tt/1d7Je)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/13/report-cia-safe-haven-nazis/

[Curmudgeoness]

39. Why does none of that surprise me?

And some of it I have heard before....although not the magnitude.

[robinlynne]

30. School of the Americas is, I believe, where the CIA brought the South American mlitary torturers

for training. We paid for it.

[Judi Lynn]

35. Here's a very short look at the torture, which mentions two of the most powerful were SOA grads:

ARGENTINA:

HOW DICTATORS FROM THE SOA

"DISAPPEAR" HUMANS AND THEIR RIGHTS

(1) Two graduates of the SOA become bloody dictators after a military coup overthrows a freely (and repeatedly) elected government.

(2) Their torture and killing include methods beyond even the Nazi imagination. Later, they forcibly demand, and receive, amnesty.

The gory details �

After World War II, populist leader Juan Perón rules Argentina as an elected president for a decade. In 1955, however, he is overthrown in a military coup. Civilian governments are prevented from completing their terms in office by military coups in 1966 and 1973.

"[A]s many people will die in Argentina as is necessary to restore order." � Army Commander-in-Chief Jorge Rafael Videla, 10/75, who becomes president five months later after overthrowing the civilian government.

What is the feared "disorder"? A diagram used at Argentina�s Air Force Academy depicts a tree of subversion with three roots: Marxism, Zionism, and Freemasonry. Progressive Catholicism appears at the top, and new growths at the bottom include human rights organizations, women�s rights, pacifism, nonaggression, disarmament, the Rotary Club, Lions Club, and junior chambers of commerce. The main branches off the trunk are Communist parties, the extreme totalitarian right (nazism and fascism), Socialist parties, liberal democracy, revolutionary front parties, Protestants, sectarians and anti-Christians, armed revolutionary organizations, and "indirect aggression"--branches off this last limb are: drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, political liberalism, economic liberalism, lay education, trade union corruption, "hippiness", pornography, homosexuality, divorce, art, newspapers, television, cinema, theater, magazines, and books.

"First we will kill all the subversives; then we will kill their collaborators; then � their sympathizers; then � those who remain indifferent; and finally we will kill the timid." -- General Iberico Saint Jean, military governor of Buenos Aires, 5/76

Under this paranoid vision, the military wages the "Dirty War" of torture, terror, and "disappearances" against the people of Argentina. Most of their victims have no connection at all to armed guerillas, but are considered guilty because of their "dangerous" political views. As many as half of the disappeared are labor activists. � Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights

Two of the military dictators overseeing this war, Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, are graduates of the School of the Americas. Under Galtieri alone, thirty thousand people are killed or disappeared.

More:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/poli/soa/argentina.htm

[Marrah_G]

11. That is horrifying....

[patrice]

13. This is heartening. nt

[patrice]

14. Naomi Klein gives more detail about how this happened in her book Shock Doctrine

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Shock_Doctrine.html?id=7ZUl-iF7Sl4C

[Beacool]

18. These killers were aided and abetted by the US.

Many of the military in Latin America were taught their "craft" at the School of the Americas.

[robinlynne]

31. yes.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Kissinger backed dirty war against left in Argentina

Kissinger backed dirty war against left in Argentina
Transcripts show former secretary of state urged violent crackdown on opposition

Julian Borger in Washington and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
The Guardian, Friday 27 August 2004 21.33 EDT

Henry Kissinger gave Argentina's military junta the green light to suppress political opposition at the start of the "dirty war" in 1976, telling the country's foreign minister: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly," according to newly-declassified documents published yesterday.

State department documents show the former secretary of state urged Argentina to crush the opposition just months after it seized power and before the US Congress convened to consider sanctions.

"We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better," Mr Kissinger told Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, the foreign minister, according to the State Department's transcript.

Carlos Osorio, an analyst at the National Security Archive, a US pressure group which published the transcript, said it was likely to be seen by historians as "a smoking gun".

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/28/argentina.julianborger

[sabrina 1]

21. Kissenger should be on trial along with them. Those people were innocent civilians who had done

nothing wrong other than being on the Left, which the leadership of this country seems to hate.

It's encouraging that they finally are bringing their war criminals to justice. Some of ours may be feeling a little worried that after decades they can still be brought to justice. All we need is a shift in public thining and in our own leadership.

I hope Kissenger got a little twinge of fear when he saw that his old buddies, contrary to what they expected, were brought to justice.

And I hope the Bush War Criminals, currently being protected from prosecution in other countries whose citizens were tortured and killed by them, are also watching and worrying.

It's shameful that this country has produced so many war criminals and not one of them has ever been held accountable.

[Beacool]

34. Despicable bastard!!!

[Judi Lynn]

20. Another aspect of the accomplishments of this Kissinger-supported right-wing dictatorship:

Baby stealing:

Tuesday, March 1st 2011- 02:46 UTC
Argentine military dictators on trial for stealing hundreds of babies

Two former Argentine dictators appeared in court Monday on charges of kidnapping hundreds of babies seized from political prisoners, minutes after birth. Ex rulers Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone alongside with six other former military officers are involved in the court case that is expected to last until the end of the year.

About 80 people are expected to testify on the systematic stealing plan ordered by the top leaders of Argentina's brutal military dictatorship from 1976-1983. Charges were read linked to 34 cases -- one of them concerning a woman who had two children in captivity, for a total of 35 stolen babies.

However authorities say that at least 400 babies were stolen during Argentina’s military dictatorship. Officials say the newborns were taken from jailed dissidents. The children were adopted by families friendly to the military government. To date, 102 people born to vanished dissidents have since recovered their true identities.

Women were interned at wards in the heart of torture centres, including the emblematic Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (ESMA). The women were kept alive during their pregnancies, only to be summarily killed after giving birth, often dropped alive from military planes into the sea.

A hood was placed over their heads during childbirth so they could not see their babies, who were then handed to a military official or an officer's relative.

More:
http://en.mercopress.com/2011/03/01/argentine-military-dictators-on-trial-for-stealing-hundreds-of-babies

[Solly Mack]

22. k/r

[Judi Lynn]

38. Connected by participation in CIA-overseen Operation Condor:

What Was Brazil's Role in Operation Condor? It Created and Led the Murderous Plan
2012 - November 2012
Written by Newsroom
Thursday, 29 November 2012 04:01

The head of Brazil's Justice and Human Rights Movement, Jair Krischke stated before the Truth Committee that it was the Brazilian dictatorship which masterminded the notorious Plan Condor, the South American military dictatorships undercover transborder organization of the sixties and seventies.

Krischke who has researched dictatorships for decades said that "Brazil created the Operation Condor" which for years was unknown given the discreet way in which Brazilians implemented international repressive actions, in contrast with the military regimes of Argentina and Chile that were far more evident.

The administration of President Dilma Rousseff created last May the Truth Committee to look into the country's past between 1954 and 1988. President Rousseff as a student leader spent over two years imprisoned by the military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

The seven-member Truth Committee includes lawyer Rosa Maria Cardoso who in the seventies defended among others Dilma Rousseff and which the military claimed at the time was an active member of a guerrilla movement. Ms Cardoso is coordinator of the specific research on the Plan Condor and received all the documents referred to the issue compiled by Krischke.

More:
http://brazzilmag.com/component/content/article/116-november-2012/12968-which-was-brazils-role-in-operation-condor-it-created-and-led-the-murderous-plan.html

[MrSlayer]

40. That's creative.

Though it seems unnecessarily costly and inefficient. Rope and shovels are way cheaper.