Panama Nails a CIA Torture Capo
Weekend Edition July 19-21, 2013
Sticking It to the Yankee Imperialists
Panama Nails a CIA Torture Capo
by STEVE HENDRICKS
You gotta love our erstwhile banana republics. While Uncle Sam has been busy the last dozen years trampling on the rights of everyone—and we now know, thanks to that paragon Edward Snowden, that everyone means everyone—and while nearly all the governments in the “civilized” world have been going along with their favorite uncle, a few Latin American countries have suddenly stood up and flipped him the bird. First there were Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia offering Snowden asylum, and then yesterday Panama arrested a former CIA bureau chief who is wanted by Italy for a kidnapping conviction but who has been steadfastly protected by the United States.
The Italian story is a tasty one that goes like this:
After 9/11, the White House and CIA loved nothing so much as a good body snatch, more politely called an extraordinary rendition. You remember those, right? We would zoom into another country, grab a guy we claimed was a “high-value terrorist,” whisk him to some hellhole like Syria or Egypt, and let our friends there give him a long dose of tough love or maybe just kill him—or, better still, both. What wasn’t to like? We didn’t have to gather evidence that would hold up in court, didn’t have to hold a messy trial, didn’t have to let reporters nose around in the merits of the case.
Pretty soon CIA chiefs all over the world were throwing guys on torture taxis and sending them to dungeons whose horrors were almost beyond imagining. Most of the victims we’ve never heard of and never will. A few, like Germany’s Khalid El-Masri and Canada’s Maher Arar, we learned of only because they were completely innocent—we had grabbed them, tortured them, then (oops!) realized we got the wrong guy, at which point even our vile client states felt compelled to let them go. (Obama’s America nonetheless refuses to compensate either El-Masri or Arar for their trauma, just as Bush’s America refused.)
Then there’s the case of Abu Omar. Abu Omar was an Egyptian living under a grant of asylum in Milan, where he worked at a radical mosque. The mosque was part of a farm system, if you will, that recruited potential sluggers and sent them to the terrorist big leagues—to Iraq, say, during our late war. Abu Omar may have been a low- or mid-level cog in the terrorist machine, or he may just have been a terrorist wannabe. Whatever the case, he was not a big player. At least a hundred other guys around the world were more deserving of America’s renditionary affections than he.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/19/panama-nails-a-cia-torture-capo/
= new reply since forum marked as read
...to have demanded help from the U.S. in spying on his "enemies" (labor leaders, leftists, prosecutors, judges), like his pal, Alvaro Uribe (mafia boss and prez of Colombia) was getting from the Bush Junta.
Martinelli is also infamous for giving instant asylum to Maria Hurtado, head of Uribe's spy club, DAS, when Colombian prosecutors tried to question her about Uribe's crimes (such as using DAS to target labor leaders for assassination). In granting instant, overnight asylum to Hurtado, Martinelli was probably responding to pressure from Bush Sr.'s "fixer," Leon Panetta, whom I believe was tidying up after Bush Jr. in Latin America.
The thing is, though, that Martinelli, 1) is VERY unpopular in Panama, and 2) has become VERY unpopular in the region, for just this sort of lapdogging for the U.S. MIC/CIA. So he may be trying to win some credibility back both locally, and in a region--Latin America--which is dominated by the Left, and a region in which sovereignty and independence are hot issues--so hot that even rightwing U.S. lapdogs have to pay at least lip service to them.
Take a look at this pix of Ricardo Martinelli, by the way.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=president+Panama&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I try not to be prejudiced about a person's appearance--cuz appearances can be deceiving--but, really, does this guy look honest? Pal of Alvaro Uribe.
One other thought: What was Robert Seldon Lady doing in Central America? I sure think that needs investigating.
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No, more thought: Interpol REFUSED a warrant for Maria Hurtado from Colombian prosecutors--likely, also, due to Panetta/CiA pressure. She's still at large in Panama (as far as I know). Colombian prosecutors have been trying to nail Uribe for years, for his many crimes. She is the key on the spying charge. There is evidence that Uribe himself is under CIA and/or Bush Cartel protection as well. (Cushy academic sinecures at Harvard and Georgetown--not without strenuous objections from the folks back home, including a Jesuit human rights priest who laid out Uribe's criminal career from the get-go, in a letter to his Jesuit brothers; appointment to a prestigious international legal commission; State Dept. letter to the judge in the Drummond Coal "death squad" case, letting Uribe off the hook as to a deposition.)
So, when they are OUR criminals, they get all this help, but when they are JOURNALISTS and WHISTLEBLOWERS made out to be criminals, no expense is too great to hound them and hunt them and threaten them, and do dirty tricks against them, and prepare unpleasant prison stays for them, if they can be caught. A really bizarre "game" is being played, with Interpol, with extradition, with asylum, with media propaganda, with very bullying threats against heads of state (Morales' plane interdiction being the most visible instance), the subversion of other peoples' legal systems (Sweden's, England's, Spain's, Austria's), and on and on. And I haven't even mentioned the half of it (going back to Uribe and the U.S. ambassador William Brownfield secretly spiriting death squad witnesses out of Colombia, to the U.S. federal prison system).
I think cocaine is part of this picture--possibly a very big part of it. But to get back to Martinelli and his particular problem right now. They DIDN'T help him (spy on his "enemies"
, apparently--and he was left to "twist slowly in the wind" on the Hurtado asylum (fodder for his "enemies"--his lack of respect for another LatAm country's legal system)--so maybe this is his revenge.
What strikes me about the whole thing is the SHREDDING of the law--the utter contempt for the law--by the U.S. government. It is simply appalling the double-standard that is being used, to protect heinous criminals, on the one hand--murderers, torturers--and harass and destroy whistleblowers on the other. Maybe even someone like Martinelli has simply had it with the insults and the bullying and the blackmail.
