Bail decision for accused war criminal delayed

[Judi Lynn]

Bail decision for accused war criminal delayed
The Canadian Press Posted: Feb 25, 2011 6:39 PM MT Last Updated: Feb 25, 2011 6:39 PM MT

A man accused of war crimes in Guatemala and facing extradition to the United States is a flight risk and should be denied bail, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice argued Friday. Jorge Vinicio Orantes Sosa, 52, has both Canadian and American citizenship and is charged in the U.S. with lying to get his papers.

~snip~
Sosa is accused of participating in a massacre in 1982 in a Guatemalan village where 251 men, women and children were killed.

~snip~
Sosa 'disappeared': U.S. lawyer
An arrest warrant for murder was issued in Guatemala years ago for Sosa. The U.S. indictment alleges he was the commanding officer of a patrol involved in attacks on the village of Las Dos Erres during the Guatemalan civil war and under the de facto presidency of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt.

"The special patrol proceeded to systematically kill the men, women and children at Dos Erres by, among other methods, hitting them in the head with a sledgehammer and throwing them into a well," reads the indictment.

More:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/02/25/calgary-jorge-sosa-guatemala-war-crimes-bail-hearing.html

LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4749420

{center]~~~~~
Earier story, arrested in Canada:

The Canadian Press
Date: Thursday Jan. 20, 2011 6:44 AM ET

http://images.ctv.ca.nyud.net:8090/archives/CTVNews/img2/20110120/470_terror_suspect2_1101202.jpg

CALGARY — Ottawa should review the criteria it uses to grant Canadian citizenship after a man accused of heinous war crimes in Guatemala nearly 30 years ago was arrested in Alberta this week, a former diplomat from the central American country said Wednesday.

Jorge Vinicio Orantes Sosa has both Canadian and American citizenship and is charged in the U.S. with making a false statement relating to naturalization and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization. He was arrested in Lethbridge, Alta., on Tuesday while visiting relatives.

Sosa, 52, is also wanted by Guatemalan authorities for allegedly participating in attacks on a village in 1982 in which 251 men, women and children were massacred and faces extradition back to the United States.

"I think Canada has to take a tough stand on this. Enough of this business," said Carmen Aguilera, a Guatemalan lawyer and the country's former honorary consul in Calgary.

More:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110120/guatemala-lawyer-says-ottawa-should-review-citizenship-criteria-110120/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files

Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files

By Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/052699a1.html

Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems. The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.

In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.

The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala. The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part from Ronald Reagan's White House.

Yet, as the world community moves to punish war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, no substantive discussion has occurred in the United States about facing up to this horrendous record of the 1980s. Rather than a debate about Reagan as a potential war criminal, the ailing ex-president is honored as a conservative icon with his name attached to Washington National Airport and with an active legislative push to have his face carved into Mount Rushmore. When the national news media does briefly acknowledge the barbarities of the 1980s in Central America, it is in the context of one-day stories about the little countries bravely facing up to their violent pasts. At times, the CIA is fingered abstractly as a bad supporting actor in the violent dramas. But never does the national press lay blame on individual American officials.

More:
http://www.converge.org.nz/lac/articles/news990610b.htm

[Peace Patriot]

2. The horrors in Guatemala alone should be symbolically piled up at "Reagan International Airport"

as a reminder of who that monster really was.

A mountain of a hundred thousand simulated bodies, with simulated pregnant women's bodies ripped open, and simulated Mayan villagers beheaded and hacked to pieces, should be constructed where all the rotters in DC have to look at it, as they go to and from their more recent imperial tasks. And on top of this art installation there should be a sign: "Ronald Reagan's Legacy."

There should probably be another such art installation for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, who slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq in the first weeks of bombing alone.

TWO mountains of simulated bodies. TWO monuments to U.S. presidential horrors. And make them more than art installations. Make them permanent.

We have a monument in DC that lists all the names of U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam. I don't oppose this monument. We SHOULD remember what our war profiteers cost us in young U.S. lives.

Maybe THREE mountains in "Uncle Reagan"'s international airport. All the victims of unjust and heinous U.S. wars--direct or indirect.

In fact, why don't we just shut down Ronnie Reagan Airport and turn it into a museum for the dead, who have been slaughtered to no purpose other war profiteering and making the rich richer.

Peace :patriot:

[Judi Lynn]

3. The areas around these monuments would need to be divided!

As we know, the right-wing would view the monuments of Reagan's murdered innocents as shrines: would come there to worship.

The human beings would come to mourn the suffering, the grief, the horror of unchecked, hate-filled power obtained by deceit, and treachery.

It's a powerful thought to remember, creating monuments. Hope this WILL occur sometime in a better world, just as people have kept the memory alive of the concentration camps, and the world's only atomic destruction of population centers.

[Peace Patriot]

4. I'm afraid you're right. The Reagan worshipers would glory in their carnage just as the...

...Bush goose-steppers did.

But I don't want to slander my fellow and sister Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom I strongly believe to be peace-loving and justice-loving. It is mostly the rich and powerful few who are ghouls and they control the media, and try to slime and degrade the rest of us as agreeing to their horrors. But there has been no "consent of the people" in these terrible crimes--neither in Guatemala, nor in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, nor in Chile yesterday nor Colombian today, nor in the recent genocide in Iraq. It has all been done by stealth and by lies of the powerful few and, of late, by stolen elections. They have to FORCE our people to unjust war. I'm not saying that some Americans haven't been fooled. Some have. I'm not saying that some Americans aren't stupid sheep or rotten opportunists. Some are. But the vast majority by far oppose unjust war and desire social justice, fairness, good government and peace. And what we, the vast majority, have to figure out is how to get our country back.

I think that true memorials to the mountains of the dead, slaughtered to enrich and the rich few and their war profiteer allies, would be well attended by the real American people.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Yes, it was truly done without consent of the people. They went to great length to conceal it all.

That's why when things happened like the riots when Nixon toured Latin America happened, we in the U.S. were thunderstruck, dumb as mud, wondering why, oh, why would those foreigners all hate that nice Mr. Nixon so much.

And that was before even larger mountains of dead human beings were being built. You definitely have a point.

It does seem as if there are a lot of a-holes here, but that's because the lunatics just make so much damned noise, and they are aglow with an unhealthy, degenerative energy! I feel better having said that. They are driven by fear, and hatred, and unable to rest, that makes them more visible, more relentless, more depressing.

It's good to hear your patience, and belief in people. When I think it over, I do recall how precious LITTLE has ever been written about Latin America when it was run by US-corporate approved puppets, but how persistantly they throw that old anti-progrtessive crap at us through their mouthpieces, our "news" media. The day is never long enough to hold it all, so it's non-stop, now.

Good time to make full use of research abilities now, before they find a way to block our internet access. As we know, they already are able to learn what books we've bought and checked out from the libraries. Odd, isn't it? Oh, well.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Thank you for your thoughts! I say to my country: Ignorance will be our downfall! Get informed!

Peace :patriot: