Operation Condor was a campaign of political repression

Political repression

Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....

 involving assassination and intelligence

Intelligence (information gathering)

Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...

 operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone

Southern Cone

Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...

 of South America. The program aimed to eradicate alleged socialist and communist influence and ideas and to control active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments. Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. It is estimated that a minimum of 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor, possibly more.
Condor's key members were the governments in Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, Uruguay

Uruguay

Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

, Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

, Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

 and Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. The United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 provided support, with Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

 and Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 joining later in more peripheral roles.

History

On 25 November 1975, leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with Manuel Contreras

Manuel Contreras

Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda is a Chilean military officer and the former head of DINA, Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. As head of DINA he was the most powerful and feared man in the country, after Pinochet...

, chief of DINA (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor. However, cooperation between various security services, in the aim of "eliminating Marxist subversion", previously existed before this meeting and Pinochet's coup d'état. Thus, during the Xth Conference of American Armies held in Caracas

Caracas

Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...

 on 3 September 1973, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian army, proposed to "extend the exchange of information" between various services in order to "struggle against subversion". Furthermore, in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police

Policía Federal Argentina

The Policía Federal Argentina is a police force of the Argentine federal government. The PFA has detachments throughout the country, but its main responsibility is policing the Federal District of Buenos Aires...

 and co-founder of the Triple A death squad, to implement cooperation guidelines in order to destroy the "subversive" threat represented by the presence of thousands of political exilees in Argentina. In August 1974 the corpses of the first victims of Condor, Bolivian refugees, were found in garbage dumps in Buenos Aires.

According to French journalist Marie-Monique Robin

Marie-Monique Robin

Marie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist. She received the Albert Londres Prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, an expose about organ theft...

, author of Escadrons de la mort, l'école française (2004, Death Squads, The French School), the paternity of Operation Condor is to be attributed to General Rivero, intelligence officer of the Argentine Armed Forces and former student of the French.

Operation Condor, which took place in the context of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

, had the tacit approval of the United States. In 1968, U.S. General Robert W. Porter stated that "In order to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are...endeavoring to foster inter-service and regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of common operating procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises." Condor was one of the fruits of this effort. The targets were officially armed groups (such as the MIR

Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)

Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...

, the Montoneros

Montoneros

Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

 or the ERP

People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)

The Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo was the military branch of the communist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores in Argentina...

, the Tupamaros

Tupamaros

Tupamaros, also known as the MLN-T , was an urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. The MLN-T is inextricably linked to its most important leader, Raúl Sendic, and his brand of social politics...

, etc.) but in fact included all kinds of political opponents, including their families and others, as reported by the Valech Commission

Valech Report

The Valech Report was a record of abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. The report was published on November 29, 2004 and detailed the results of a six-month investigation. A revised version was released on June 1, 2005...

. The Argentine "Dirty War

Dirty War

The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...

", for example, which resulted in approximatively 30,000 victims according to most estimates, targeted many trade-unionists, relatives of activists, etc.

From 1976 onwards, the Chilean DINA and its Argentine counterpart, SIDE, were its front-line troops. The infamous "death flights

Death flights

The death flights were a form of forced disappearance routinely practiced during the Argentine "Dirty War", begun by Admiral Luis María Mendía. Victims of death flights were first drugged into a stupor, hustled aboard fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters, stripped naked and pushed into the Río de la...

", theorized in Argentina by Luis María Mendía

Luis María Mendía

Luis María Mendía was the Argentine Chief of Naval Operations in 1976-77, with the rank of vice-admiral. According to confessions gathered by Horacio Verbitsky and made by Adolfo Scilingo , Luis María Mendía was the architect of the "death flight" assassination method whereby the Argentine state...

 — and also used during the Algerian War (1954–1962) by French forces — were widely used, in order to make the corpses, and therefore evidence, disappear. There were also many cases of child abduction.

On 22 December 1992 a significant amount of information about Operation Condor came to light when José Fernández

José Fernández

José Fernández may refer to:*José Agustín Fernández, Paraguayan judge and human rights activist, found the "terror archives"*José Ramón Fernández Álvarez , vice-president of the Cuban Council of Ministers...

, a Paraguayan judge, visited a police station in the Lambaré

Lambaré

Lambaré is a city in Central Department, Paraguay, part of the Gran Asunción metropolitan area.- Sources : * – World-Gazetteer.com...

 suburb of Asunción

Asunción

Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San...

 to look for files on a former political prisoner. Instead he found what became known as the "terror archives

Terror archives

The "Archives of Terror" were found on December 22, 1992, by a lawyer, Dr. Martín Almada, and a human-rights activist and judge, José Agustín Fernández, in a police station in a suburb of Asunción , capital of Paraguay. Fernández was looking for files on a former prisoner...

", detailing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans secretly kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Some of these countries have since used portions of this archive to prosecute former military officers. The archives counted 50,000 persons murdered, 30,000 "desaparecidos" and 400,000 incarcerated.

According to these archives other countries such as Peru cooperated to varying extents by providing intelligence information in response to requests from the security services of the Southern Cone

Southern Cone

Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...

 countries. Even though Peru was not at the secret November 1975 meeting in Santiago de Chile there is evidence of its involvement. For instance, in June 1980, Peru was known to have been collaborating with Argentine agents of 601 Intelligence Battalion

Batallón de Inteligencia 601

The Batallón de Inteligencia 601 was a special military intelligence service of the Argentine Army whose structure was set up in the late 1970s, active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor, and disbanded in 2000...

 in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of a group of Montoneros

Montoneros

Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

 living in exile in Lima

Lima

Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...

.

The "terror archives

Terror archives

The "Archives of Terror" were found on December 22, 1992, by a lawyer, Dr. Martín Almada, and a human-rights activist and judge, José Agustín Fernández, in a police station in a suburb of Asunción , capital of Paraguay. Fernández was looking for files on a former prisoner...

" also revealed Colombia's and Venezuela's greater or lesser degree of cooperation (Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....

 was probably at the meeting that ordered Orlando Letelier

Orlando Letelier

Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...

's car bombing). It has been alleged that a Colombian paramilitary organization known as Alianza Americana Anticomunista

Alianza Americana Anticomunista

The Alianza Americana Anticomunista was believed to be a paramilitary far-right group mainly operating in Colombia between 1978 and 1979.Contemporary accusations and declassified U.S...

 may have cooperated with Operation Condor. Brazil signed the agreement later (June 1976), and refused to engage in actions outside Latin America.

Mexico, together with Costa Rica, Canada, France, the UK, Spain and Sweden received many people fleeing from the terror regimes. Operation Condor officially ended with the ousting of the Argentine dictatorship in 1983, although the killings continued for some time after that.

Argentina

The Argentine Dirty War was carried on simultaneously with and overlapping Operation Condor. The Argentine SIDE

Secretaría de Inteligencia

Secretaría de Inteligencia is the premier intelligence agency of the Argentine Republic and head of its National Intelligence System....

 cooperated with the Chilean DINA in numerous cases of desaparecidos

Forced disappearance

In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...

. Chilean General Carlos Prats

Carlos Prats

General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...

, Uruguayan former MPs Zelmar Michelini

Zelmar Michelini

Zelmar Michelini was a Uruguayan reporter and politician, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976 as part of Operation Condor....

, Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz

Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz

Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz was a Uruguayan political figure, who died by assassination in the framework of Operation Condor. He arried with Matilde Rodriguez Larreta , had 5 children: Mark, John Paul, Magdalena, Facundo and Matthew.-Background and political role:He served as a Uruguayan deputy, and was...

 and the ex-president of Bolivia, Juan José Torres

Juan José Torres

Juan José Torres González was a Bolivian socialist politician and military leader. He served as President of Bolivia from October 7, 1970 to August 21, 1971. He was popularly known as "J.J."...

, were assassinated in the Argentine capital.

The SIDE also assisted Bolivian general Luis Garcia Meza Tejada

Luis García Meza Tejada

Luis García Meza Tejada is a former Bolivian dictator. A native of La Paz, he was a career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the reign of dictator Hugo Banzer...

's Cocaine Coup in Bolivia, with the help of Gladio operative Stefano Delle Chiaie

Stefano Delle Chiaie

Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...

 and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie

Klaus Barbie

Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie was an SS-Hauptsturmführer , Gestapo member and war criminal. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon.- Early life :...

 (see also Operation Charly

Operation Charly

Operation Charly , according to journalist María Seoane, was the alleged code-name of a right-wing covert operation to extend the illegal methods of repression used in the so-called "Dirty War" in Argentina to Central America...

). The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, a group of mothers who had lost their children to the dictatorship, started demonstrating each Thursday on Plaza de Mayo

Plaza de Mayo

The Plaza de Mayo is the main square in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is flanked by Hipólito Yrigoyen, Balcarce, Rivadavia and Bolívar streets....

 from April 1977, in front of the Casa Rosada

Casa Rosada

La Casa Rosada is the official seat of the executive branch of the government of Argentina, and of the offices of the President. The President normally lives at the Quinta de Olivos, a compound in Olivos, Buenos Aires Province. Its characteristic color is pink, and is considered one of the most...

 in Buenos Aires, the seat of the government, to reclaim their children from the junta. The Mothers continue their struggle for justice

Justice

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...

 to this day (2009).

The National Commission for Forced Disappearances

Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas

National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons was an Argentine organization created by President Raúl Alfonsín on 15 December 1983, shortly after his inauguration, to investigate the fate of the desaparecidos and other human rights violations performed during the military dictatorship...

 (CONADEP), led by writer Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

, was created in 1983. Two years later, the Juicio a las Juntas

Juicio a las Juntas

The Trial of the Juntas was the judicial trial of the members of the de facto military government that ruled Argentina during the dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, which lasted from 1976 to 1983...

 (Trial of the Juntas) largely succeeded in proving the crimes of the various juntas which had formed the self-styled National Reorganization Process

National Reorganization Process

The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...

. Most of the top officers who were tried were sentenced to life imprisonment

Life imprisonment

Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...

: Jorge Rafael Videla

Jorge Rafael Videla

Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo is a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón...

, Emilio Eduardo Massera

Emilio Eduardo Massera

Emilio Eduardo Massera was an Argentine military officer, and a leading participant in the Argentine coup d'état of 1976. In 1981, he was found to be a member of P2...

, Roberto Eduardo Viola

Roberto Eduardo Viola

Roberto Eduardo Viola Redondo was an Argentine military officer who briefly served as president of Argentina from March 29 to December 11, 1981 during a period of military rule.-President of Argentina:...

, Armando Lambruschini

Armando Lambruschini

Armando Lambruschini was an admiral in the Argentine Navy.-Life and career:He enrolled at the Argentine Naval School in 1942, and graduated as a midshipman in 1946...

, Raúl Agosti, Rubén Graffigna, Leopoldo Galtieri

Leopoldo Galtieri

Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli was an Argentine general and President of Argentina from December 22, 1981 to June 18, 1982, during the last military dictatorship . The death squad Intelligence Battalion 601 directly reported to him...

, Jorge Anaya

Jorge Anaya

Admiral Jorge Isaac Anaya was a member of the Argentine Navy. He was born in Bahía Blanca, in the province of Buenos Aires...

 and Basilio Lami Dozo

Basilio Lami Dozo

Brigadier General Basilio Arturo Ignacio Lami Dozo was a member of the Argentine Air Force.He participated in the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganisation Process and, along with Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and Jorge Isaac Anaya, was a member of the Third Military Junta that...

. However, Raúl Alfonsín

Raúl Alfonsín

Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín was an Argentine lawyer, politician and statesman, who served as the President of Argentina from December 10, 1983, to July 8, 1989. Alfonsín was the first democratically-elected president of Argentina following the military government known as the National Reorganization...

's government passed two amnesty law

Amnesty law

An amnesty law is any law that retroactively exempts a select group of people, usually military leaders and government leaders, from criminal liability for crimes committed.Most allegations involve human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.-History:...

s protecting military officers involved in human rights abuses: the 1986 Ley de Punto Final

Ley de Punto Final

Ley de Punto Final was a law passed by the National Congress of Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional . Formally, this law is referred to by number Ley de Punto Final (Spanish, roughly translated Full Stop Law) was a law passed by the...

 (law of closure) and the 1987 Ley de Obediencia Debida

Ley de Obediencia Debida

Ley de Obediencia Debida was a law passed by the National Congress of Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional . Formally, this law is referred to by number Ley de Obediencia Debida (Spanish, Law of Due Obedience) was a law passed by the...

 (law of due obedience). President Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem

Carlos Saúl Menem is an Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. He is currently an Argentine National Senator for La Rioja Province.-Early life:...

 then pardon

Pardon

Clemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...

ed the leaders of the junta in 1989–1990. Following continuous protests by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other associations, the amnesty laws were repealed by the Argentine Supreme Court

Supreme Court of Argentina

The Supreme Court of Argentina is the highest court of law of the Argentine Republic. It was inaugurated on 15 January 1863. However, during much of the 20th century, the Court and, in general, the Argentine judicial system, has lacked autonomy from the executive power...

 nearly twenty years later, in June 2005.

In Argentina DINA's civil agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel, prosecuted for crimes against humanity in 2004, was condemned to life imprisonment for his part in General Prat's murder. In 2003, federal judge Maria Servini de Cubria requested the extradition from Chile of Mariana Callejas, who was Michael Townley

Michael Townley

Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...

's wife (himself a U.S. expatriate and DINA agent), and Cristoph Willikie, a retired colonel from the Chilean army—all three of them are accused of this murder. Chilean appeal court judge Nibaldo Segura refused extradition in July 2005 on the grounds that they had already been prosecuted in Chile. http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/antialone.html?page=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html

It has been claimed that Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie

Stefano Delle Chiaie

Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...

—also an operative of Gladio "stay-behind" secret NATO paramilitary organization—was involved in the murder of General Prats. He and fellow extremist Vincenzo Vinciguerra

Vincenzo Vinciguerra

Vincenzo Vinciguerra is an Italian neo-fascist activist, a former member of the Avanguardia Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo . He is currently serving a life-sentence for the murder of three policemen by a car bomb in Peteano in 1972...

 testified in Rome in December 1995 before judge María Servini de Cubría that DINA agents Enrique Arancibia Clavel and Michael Townley were directly involved in this assassination. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2000/05/22/mun6.html

Brazil

In Brazil, president Fernando Henrique Cardoso

Fernando Henrique Cardoso

Fernando Henrique Cardoso – also known by his initials FHC – was the 34th President of the Federative Republic of Brazil for two terms from January 1, 1995 to December 31, 2002. He is an accomplished sociologist, professor and politician...

 ordered in 2000 the release of some military files concerning Operation Condor. Italian attorney general

Attorney General

In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...

 Giancarlo Capaldo, who is investigating the disappearances of Italian citizens, probably by a mixture of Argentine, Chilean, Paraguayan and Brazilian military, accused 11 Brazilians of involvement. However, according to the official statement, "they could not confirm nor deny that Argentine, Brazilian, Paraguayan and Chilean militaries will be submitted to a trial." As of December 2009, nobody in Brazil has been convicted of human rights violations for the 21 years of military dictatorship there.

Kidnapping of Uruguayans

The Condor Operation expanded the covered-up repression from Uruguay to Brazil in an event that happened in November 1978 and later known as "o Sequestro dos Uruguaios´, that is, "the Kidnapping of the Uruguayans". On that occasion, under consent of the Brazilian military regime, high officers of the Uruguayan army secretly crossed the frontier, heading to Porto Alegre, capital of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. There they kidnapped a militant couple of the Uruguayan political opposition, Universindo Rodriguez and Lilian Celiberti, along with her two children, Camilo and Francesca, 5 and 3 years old.
The illegal operation failed when two Brazilian journalists – the reporter Luiz Cláudio Cunha and the photographer Joao Baptista Scalco, from Veja Magazine, were warned by an anonymous phone call about the disappearance of the Uruguayan couple. The two journalists decided to check the information and headed to the appointed address: an apartment in the borough of Menino Deus in Porto Alegre. There, they were mistakenly taken as other members of the Uruguayan opposition by the armed men who had arrested Lilian. Universindo and the children had already been clandestinely taken to Uruguay. The unexpected arrival of the journalists disclosed the secret operation which had to be suddenly suspended. Lillian was then taken back to Montevideo. The failure of the operation avoided the murder of the four Uruguayans. The news of a political kidnapping made headlines in the Brazilian press and became an international scandal which embarrassed the military governments of Brazil and Uruguay. A few days after, the children were taken to their maternal grandparents in Montevideo. Universindo as well as Lilian were imprisoned and tortured in Brazil and then taken to military prisons in Uruguay where they remained during the next five years. After the Uruguayan re-democratization in 1984, the couple was released and then confirmed all the details of the kidnapping.

In 1980, two inspectors of DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order, an official police branch in charge of the political repression during the military regime) were convicted by the Brazilian Justice as the armed men who had arrested the journalists in Lilian's apartment in Porto Alegre. They were João Augusto da Rosa and Orandir Portassi Lucas (a former football player of Brazilian teams known as Didi Pedalada), both identified later as participants in the kidnapping operation by the reporters and the Uruguayan couple — which surely confirmed the involvement of the Brazilian Government in the Condor Operation. In 1991, through the initiative of Governor Pedro Simon, the State of Rio Grande do Sul officially recognized the kidnapping of the Uruguayans and compensated them for this, inspiring the democratic government of the President Luis Alberto Lacalle in Uruguay to do the same a year later.

Police officer Pedro Seelig, the head of the DOPS at the time of the kidnapping, was identified by the Uruguayan couple as the man in charge of the operation in Porto Alegre. When Seelig was denounced to the Brazilian Justice, Universindo and Lílian were in prison in Uruguay and they were prevented from testifying against him. The Brazilian policeman was then cleared of all charges due to alleged lack of evidences. Lilian and Universindo's later testimony also proved that four officers of the secret Uruguayan Counter-information Division – two majors and two captains – took part in the operation under consent of the Brazilian authorities. One of these officers, Captain Glauco Yanonne, was himself responsible for torturing Universindo Dias in the DOPS headquarters in Porto Alegre. Even though Universindo and Lilian recognized the Uruguayan military men who had arrested and tortured them, not a single one of them was prosecuted by the Justice in Montevideo. This was due to the Law of Impunity which guaranteed amnesty to all Uruguayan people involved in political repression.

The investigative journalism of the Veja Magazine awarded Cunha and Scalco with the 1979 Esso Prize, the most important prize of the Brazilian Press. Hugo Cores, a former Uruguayan political prisoner who was living in São Paulo at the time of the kidnapping and was the author of the anonymous phone call to Cunha, spoke the following to the Brazilian press in 1993: "All the Uruguayans kidnapped abroad, around 180 people, are missing to this day. The only ones who managed to survive are Lilian, her children, and Universindo".

The kidnapping of the Uruguayans in Porto Alegre entered into history as the only failure with international repercussion in the whole Operation Condor, among several hundreds of clandestine actions from the Latin America Southern Cone dictatorships, who were responsible for thousands of killed and missing people in the period between 1975 and 1985. Analyzing the political repression in the region during that decade, the Brazilian journalist Nilson Mariano estimates the number of killed and missing people as: 297 in Uruguay, 366 in Brazil, 2,000 in Paraguay, 3,196 in Chile and 30,000 in Argentina. The so-called "Terror Files" (Portuguese: "Arquivos do Terror") – a whole set of 60,000 documents, weighting 4 tons and making 593,000 microfilmed pages which were discovered by a former Paraguayan political prisoner Marti Almada, in Lambare, Paraguay, in 1992 – provides even higher numbers: the total result of Southern Cone Operation Condor had left up to 50,000 killed, 30,000 missing and 400,000 arrested.

Assassination of João Goulart

After his overthrow, João "Jango" Goulart

João Goulart

João Belchior Marques Goulart was a Brazilian politician and the 24th President of Brazil until a military coup d'état deposed him on April 1, 1964. He is considered to have been the last left-wing President of the country until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.-Name:João Goulart is...

 became the first Brazilian president to die in exile. He died in his sleep in Mercedes

Mercedes, Buenos Aires

Mercedes is a city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is located 100 km west from Buenos Aires and 30 km south west of Luján. It is the head town of the district of Mercedes as well as of the judicial district...

, Argentina on 6 December 1976 of an alleged heart attack. Since his body was never submitted to an autopsy

Autopsy

An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...

, the real cause of his death remains unknown.

On 26 April 2000 former governor of Rio de Janeiro Leonel Brizola

Leonel Brizola

Leonel de Moura Brizola was a Brazilian politician. Launched in politics by Getúlio Vargas, Brizola was the only politician to serve as governor of two different states in the whole history of Brazil. In 1959 he was elected governor of Rio Grande do Sul, and in 1982 and 1990 he was elected...

 alleged that ex-presidents of Brazil João Goulart

João Goulart

João Belchior Marques Goulart was a Brazilian politician and the 24th President of Brazil until a military coup d'état deposed him on April 1, 1964. He is considered to have been the last left-wing President of the country until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.-Name:João Goulart is...

 and Juscelino Kubitschek were assassinated as part of Operation Condor, and requested the opening of investigations on their deaths. Goulart officially died of a heart attack and Kubitschek a car accident.

On 27 January 2008, newspaper Folha de S. Paulo

Folha de S. Paulo

Folha de S. Paulo, known simply as Folha , is a Brazilian daily newspaper founded and continuously published in São Paulo since 19 February 1921. Owned by the Frias de Oliveira family since 1962, it has Brazil's largest circulation since 1986. Alongside O Globo and O Estado de S...

 printed a story with a statement of Mario Neira Barreiro, a former member of the intelligence service of Uruguay's dictatorship, declaring that Goulart was poisoned, endorsing the suspicions of the late Brizola. The order to assassinate Goulart, according to him, came from Sérgio Fleury, head of the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (Department of Political and Social Order) and the licence to kill

Licence to Kill

Licence to Kill, released in 1989, is the sixteenth entry in the Eon Productions James Bond series and the first one not to use the title of an Ian Fleming novel. It marks Timothy Dalton's second and final performance in his brief tenure in the lead role of James Bond...

 came from president Ernesto Geisel

Ernesto Geisel

Ernesto Beckmann Geisel, was a Brazilian military leader and politician of German descent who was President of Brazil from 1974 to 1979.-Early life and family:...

 himself. On July 2008, a special commission of the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, Goulart's home state, released a document saying that "the evidences that Jango was willfully assassinated, with knowledge of the Geisel government, are strong".

On March 2009, the magazine CartaCapital

CartaCapital

CartaCapital is a weekly Brazilian newsmagazine published in Santana do Parnaíba, São Paulo and João Pessoa, Paraíba and distributed throughout the country by Editora Confiança. The main focuses of the magazine are politics, economy, social issues and culture.-History:CartaCapital was created in...

 published unreleased documents of the National Intelligence Service made by an undercover agent on Jango's properties in Uruguay, which reinforces the theory that the former president was poisoned. The Goulart family has not identified yet who could be the "B Agent", as he is referred in the documents. The agent was such a close friend to Jango that he described that during the former president's 56th birthday party he had an argument with his son because of a fight between his employees Manoel dos Santos and Tito. According to the "B Agent", Manoel pointed a knife at Tito, a "sexual deviant" who refused "sexual advances

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

" by him. As a result of the story, the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies

Chamber of Deputies of Brazil

The Chamber of Deputies of Brazil is a federal legislative body and the lower house of the National Congress of Brazil. As of 2006, the chamber comprises 513 deputies, who are elected by proportional representation to serve four-year terms...

 decided to investigate the thesis that Jango was poisoned.

Later, during an interview on the same magazine, Jango's widow, Maria Teresa Fontela Goulart

Maria Teresa Fontela Goulart

Maria Teresa Fontela Goulart was the wife of the 24th president of Brazil, João Goulart, and served as First Lady during his presidency from 1961 until 1964, when he was deposed by a military-led coup d'état.-Early life:...

, revealed documents from the Uruguayan government which reinforces her complaints that her family was being monitored. The Uruguayan followed the footsteps of Jango, his business, and his political activities. These files from 1965 – a year after the coup in Brazil – says that he could be the victim of an attack. In a document requested by the Movement for Justice and Human Rights and the President João Goulart Institute, the Uruguayan Interior Ministry said that "serious and responsible Brazilian sources" talked about an "alleged plot against the former Brazilian president."

Chile

When Augusto Pinochet was arrested

Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial

General Augusto Pinochet was indicted for human rights violations committed in his native Chile by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón on 10 October 1998. He was arrested in London six days later and finally released by the British government in March 2000...

 in London in 1998 in response to Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón

Baltasar Garzón

Baltasar Garzón Real is a Spanish jurist who served on Spain's central criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional. He was the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No...

's request for his extradition

Extradition

Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...

 to Spain, information concerning Condor was revealed. One of the lawyers who asked for his extradition talked about an attempt to assassinate Carlos Altamirano

Carlos Altamirano

Carlos Altamirano Orrego is a lawyer and one of the most influential politicians of Chilean socialism. He was the general secretary of the Chilean Socialist Party between 1971 and 1979. Before that, he was deputy from 1961 to 1965 and senator from 1965 to 1973...

, leader of the Chilean Socialist Party: it was claimed that Pinochet met Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie

Stefano Delle Chiaie

Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...

 during Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

's funeral in Madrid in 1975 in order to have Altamirano murdered. But as with Bernardo Leighton

Bernardo Leighton

Bernardo Leighton Guzmán was a Chilean Christian Democrat who was targeted by Operation Condor.In 1937, President Arturo Alessandri Palma appointed him as Employment minister....

, who was shot in Rome in 1975 after a meeting the same year in Madrid between Stefano Delle Chiaie, former CIA agent Michael Townley

Michael Townley

Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...

 and anti-Castrist Virgilio Paz Romero

Virgilio Paz Romero

Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various anti-communist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C...

, the plan ultimately failed.

Chilean judge Juan Guzmán Tapia

Juan Guzmán Tapia

Juan Salvador Guzmán Tapia is a retired Chilean judge who gained international recognition for being the first judge to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on human rights charges, after Pinochet's return to Chile following more than a year of house arrest in London, in...

 eventually established a precedent

Precedent

In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a principle or rule established in a legal case that a court or other judicial body may apply when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts...

 concerning the crime of "permanent kidnapping": since the bodies of victims kidnapped and presumably murdered could not be found, he deemed that the kidnapping was deemed to continue, rather than to have occurred so long ago that the perpetrators were protected by an amnesty decreed in 1978 or by the Chilean statute of limitations

Statute of limitations

A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...

. Ironically, the perpetrators' success in hiding evidence of their crimes frustrated their attempts to escape from justice.

General Carlos Prats

General Carlos Prats

Carlos Prats

General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...

 and his wife were killed by the Chilean DINA on 30 September 1974 by a car bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they lived in exile. In Chile the judge investigating this case, Alejandro Solís, definitively terminated the prosecution of Pinochet for this particular case after the Chilean Supreme court rejected a demand to revoke his immunity from prosecution in January 2005. The leaders of DINA, including chief Manuel Contreras, ex-chief of operation and retired general Raúl Itturiaga Neuman, his brother Roger Itturiaga, and ex-brigadeers Pedro Espinoza Bravo and José Zara, are accused in Chile of this assassination. DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel

Enrique Arancibia Clavel

Enrique Arancibia was a Chilean DINA agent, who resided in unofficial exile in Buenos Aires after the assassination of Chilean Army Chief of Staff René Schneider on 25 October 1970. He was arrested by Argentine intelligence officers shortly after the extradition of Michael Townley to the US, and...

 has been convicted in Argentina for the murder.

Bernardo Leighton

Bernardo Leighton

Bernardo Leighton

Bernardo Leighton Guzmán was a Chilean Christian Democrat who was targeted by Operation Condor.In 1937, President Arturo Alessandri Palma appointed him as Employment minister....

 and his wife were severely injured by gunshots on 5 October 1976 while in exile in Rome. According to the National Security Archive

National Security Archive

The National Security Archive is a 501 non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located in the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Founded in 1985 by Scott Armstrong, it archives and publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of US...

 and Italian attorney general Giovanni Salvi, in charge of former DINA head Manuel Contreras' prosecution, Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Michael Townley and Virgilio Paz Romero

Virgilio Paz Romero

Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various anti-communist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C...

 in Madrid in 1975 to plan the murder of Bernardo Leighton with the help of Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

's secret police.

Orlando Letelier

Another target was Orlando Letelier

Orlando Letelier

Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...

, a former minister of the Chilean Allende

Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....

 government who was assassinated by a car bomb explosion in Washington, D.C. on 21 September 1976. His assistant, Ronni Moffitt

Ronni Moffitt

Ronni Moffitt , was a American political activist.-Early Life:She was born in Passaic, New Jersey as Ronni Susan Karpen on January 10, 1951 to Murray and Hilda Karpen. She was the oldest of three children including Harry Karpen and Michael Karpen. Her family owned a restaurant called "Karpen's" and...

, a U.S. citizen, also died in the explosion. Michael Townley, General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA, and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, also formerly of DINA, were convicted for the murders. In 1978, Chile agreed to hand over Townley to the US, in order to reduce the tension about Letelier's murder. Townley, however, was freed under the witness protection program. The US is still waiting for Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza to be extradited.

In an article published 17 December 2004 in the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, Francisco Letelier, the son of Orlando Letelier, wrote that his father's assassination was part of Operation Condor, described as "an intelligence-sharing network used by six South American dictators of that era to eliminate dissidents." Augusto Pinochet has been accused of being a participant in Operation Condor. Francisco Letelier declared, "My father's murder was part of Condor."

Michael Townley has accused Pinochet of being responsible for Orlando Letelier's death. Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. According to Jean-Guy Allard, after consultations with the terrorist organization CORU

Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations

Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations is an anti-Castro group founded by Cuban exiles Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampoll and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo....

's leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....

 and Orlando Bosch

Orlando Bosch

Orlando Bosch Ávila was a Cuban exile militant, former Central Intelligence Agency-backed operative, and head of Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, which the FBI has described as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization". Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called...

, those elected to carry out the murder were Cuban-Americans José Dionisio Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz, and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll. According to the Miami Herald, Luis Posada Carriles was at this meeting that decided on Letelier's death and also about the Cubana Flight 455

Cubana Flight 455

Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a terrorist attack on October 6, 1976. All 78 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed in what was then the deadliest terrorist airline attack in the Western hemisphere...

 bombing.

Operación Silencio

Operación Silencio (Operation Silence) was an operation to impede investigations by Chilean judges by removing witnesses from the country, starting about a year before the "terror archives

Terror archives

The "Archives of Terror" were found on December 22, 1992, by a lawyer, Dr. Martín Almada, and a human-rights activist and judge, José Agustín Fernández, in a police station in a suburb of Asunción , capital of Paraguay. Fernández was looking for files on a former prisoner...

" were found in Paraguay.

In April 1991 Arturo Sanhueza Ross, linked to the murder of MIR leader Jecar Neghme in 1989, left the country. According to the Rettig Report

Rettig Report

The Rettig Report, officially The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report, is a 1991 report by a commission designated by then President Patricio Aylwin encompassing human rights abuses resulting in death or disappearance that occurred in Chile during the years of military rule...

, Jecar Neghme's death was carried out by Chilean intelligence agents. In September 1991 Carlos Herrera Jiménez, who killed trade-unionist Tucapel Jiménez, flew away. In October 1991 Eugenio Berríos

Eugenio Berríos

Eugenio Berríos Sagredo was a Chilean biochemist who worked for the DINA intelligence agency.Berríos was charged with carrying outProyecto Andrea in which Pinochet ordered the production of sarin gas, a chemical weapon used by the DINA. Sarin gas leaves no trace and victims' deaths closely mimic...

, a chemist who had worked with DINA agent Michael Townley, was escorted from Chile to Uruguay by Operation Condor agents, in order to escape testifying in the Letelier case. He used Argentinian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Brazilian passports, raising concerns that Operation Condor was not dead. In 1995 Berríos was found dead in El Pinar, near Montevideo

Montevideo

Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...

 (Uruguay), his murderers having tried to make the identification of his body impossible.

In January 2005, Michael Townley, who now lives in the USA under the witness protection program, acknowledged to agents of Interpol Chile links between DINA and the detention and torture center Colonia Dignidad

Colonia Dignidad

Villa Baviera , formerly known as Colonia Dignidad is a hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region, Chile. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German...

, http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/antialone.html?page=http://www.cooperativa.cl/p4_noticias/site/artic/20050330/pags/20050330114755.html which was founded in 1961 by Paul Schäfer

Paul Schäfer

Paul Schäfer Schneider was the founder and former leader of a sect and agricultural commune of German immigrants called Colonia Dignidad —later renamed Villa Baviera—located in the south of Chile, about 340 km south of Santiago...

, arrested in March 2005 in Buenos Aires, and since convicted on charges of child rape. Townley also revealed information about Colonia Dignidad and the Army's Bacteriological Warfare Laboratory. This last laboratory would have replaced the old DINA's laboratory on Via Naranja de lo Curro street, where Michael Townley worked with the chemical assassin Eugenio Berríos. The toxin that allegedly killed Christian-Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva

Eduardo Frei Montalva

Eduardo Frei Montalva was a Chilean political leader of world stature. In his long political career, he was Minister of Public Works, president of his Christian Democratic Party, senator, President of the Senate, and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970...

 may have been made in this new lab in Colonia Dignidad, according to the judge investigating the case.

U.S. Congressman Edward Koch

In February 2004 John Dinges

John Dinges

John Dinges was special correspondent for Time, Washington Post and ABC Radio in Chile. With a group of Chilean journalists, he cofounded the Chilean magazine APSI...

, a reporter, published The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press, 2004). In this book he reveals how Uruguayan military officials threatened to assassinate US Congressman Edward Koch (later Mayor of New York City) in mid-1976. In late July 1976, the CIA station chief in Montevideo received information about it, but recommended that the Agency take no action because the Uruguayan officers (among them Colonel José Fons, who was at the November 1975 secret meeting in Santiago, Chile, and Major José Nino Gavazzo, who headed a team of intelligence officers working in Argentina in 1976, where he was responsible for more than 100 Uruguayans' deaths) had been drinking when the threat was made. In an interview for the book, Koch said that George H.W. Bush, CIA's director at the time, informed him in October 1976 – more than two months afterward, and after Orlando Letelier's murder – that "his sponsorship of legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay on human rights grounds had provoked secret police officials to 'put a contract out for you'". In mid-October 1976, Koch wrote to the Justice Department asking for FBI protection. None was provided. In late 1976, Colonel Fons and Major Gavazzo were assigned to prominent diplomatic posts in Washington, D.C., but the State Department forced the Uruguayan government to withdraw their appointments, with the public explanation that "Fons and Gavazzo could be the objects of unpleasant publicity." Koch only became aware of the connections between the threats in 2001.

Other cases

The Chilean leader of the MIR

Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)

Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...

, Edgardo Enríquez, who "disappeared" in Argentina, as well as another MIR leader, Jorge Fuentes; Alexei Jaccard, Chilean and Swiss, Ricardo Ramírez and a support network to the Communist party dismantled in Argentina in 1977. Cases of repression against German, Spanish, Peruvians citizens and Jewish people were also reported. The assassinations of former Bolivian president Juan José Torres

Juan José Torres

Juan José Torres González was a Bolivian socialist politician and military leader. He served as President of Bolivia from October 7, 1970 to August 21, 1971. He was popularly known as "J.J."...

 and former Uruguayan deputies Héctor Gutiérrez

Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz

Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz was a Uruguayan political figure, who died by assassination in the framework of Operation Condor. He arried with Matilde Rodriguez Larreta , had 5 children: Mark, John Paul, Magdalena, Facundo and Matthew.-Background and political role:He served as a Uruguayan deputy, and was...

 and Zelmar Michelini

Zelmar Michelini

Zelmar Michelini was a Uruguayan reporter and politician, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976 as part of Operation Condor....

 in Buenos Aires in 1976 was also part of Condor. The DINA entered into contact even with Croatian terrorists, Italian neofascists and the Shah's SAVAK

SAVAK

SAVAK was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service established by Iran's Mohammad Reza Shah on the recommendation of the British Government and with the help of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency SAVAK (Persian: ساواک, short for سازمان اطلاعات و امنیت کشور...

 to locate and assassinate dissidents.

Operation Condor was at its peak in 1976. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again, and again had to go underground or into exile. Chilean General Carlos Prats

Carlos Prats

General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...

 had already been assassinated by the Chilean DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former CIA agent Michael Townley

Michael Townley

Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...

. Cuban diplomats were also assassinated in Buenos Aires in the infamous Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship. These centers were managed by the Grupo de Tareas 18 headed by convicted armed robber Aníbal Gordon, who reported directly to General Commandant of the SIDE

Side

Side was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...

 Otto Paladino. Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. One of the survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained there for two months, identified Chilean, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Bolivian prisoners who were interrogated by agents from their own countries. It is there that the 19-year-old daughter-in-law of poet Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman is an Argentine poet. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956. He won the Cervantes Prize in 2007, the most important in Spanish literature...

 was tortured with her husband, before being transported to Montevideo where she delivered a baby which was immediately stolen by Uruguayan military officers.

According to John Dinges

John Dinges

John Dinges was special correspondent for Time, Washington Post and ABC Radio in Chile. With a group of Chilean journalists, he cofounded the Chilean magazine APSI...

's book Los años del Cóndor Chilean MIR

Mir

Mir was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the...

 prisoners in the Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, 22-year-old Jesús Cejas Arias, and 26-year-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a man who travelled from Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of Cuban ambassador to Argentina Emilio Aragonés, had been kidnapped on 9 August 1976 at the corner of calle Arribeños and Virrey del Pino by 40 armed SIDE agents who blocked the street with their Ford Falcon

Ford Falcon (Argentina)

The Argentine Ford Falcon is a car that was built by Ford Argentina from 1962 to 1991. Mechanically, it was based on Ford USA's 1960 Falcon. The Falcon retained the same elegant body style throughout its production, with several substantial face lifts taking place during its lifespan, giving it a...

s, the cars used by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to Dinges the FBI and the CIA were informed of their arrest. He quotes a cable sent by FBI agent in Buenos Aires Robert Scherrer on 22 September 1976 in which he mentioned in passing that Michael Townley

Michael Townley

Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...

, later convicted for the assassination on 21 September 1976 of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier

Orlando Letelier

Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...

 in Washington, D.C., had taken part to the interrogatories of the two Cubans. The former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría in Santiago de Chile on 22 December 1999 that Michael Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll were present in the Orletti center, having travelled from Chile to Argentina on 11 August 1976, and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats." Anti-Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

 Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....

 also boasted in his autobiography, "Los caminos del guerrero", of the murder of the two young men.

U.S. involvement

Although the United States was not a member of the Condor consortium, evidence shows that the United States provided key organizational, financial and technical assistance to the operation. The United States government sponsored and collaborated with DINA and with the other intelligence organizations forming the nucleus of Condor, despite the fact that the military dictatorships were killing and torturing tens of thousands of people. CIA documents show that the CIA had close contact with members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras

Manuel Contreras

Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda is a Chilean military officer and the former head of DINA, Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. As head of DINA he was the most powerful and feared man in the country, after Pinochet...

. Contreras was retained as a paid CIA contact until 1977, even as his involvement in the Letelier-Moffit assassination was being revealed.

In the Paraguayan Archives there were official requests to track suspects to and from the U.S. Embassy, the CIA, and FBI. The CIA provided lists of suspects and other intelligence information to the military states. The FBI also searched for individuals wanted by DINA in the United States in 1975.

In June 1999, the State Department released thousands of declassified documents showing for the first time that the CIA and the State and Defense Departments were intimately aware of Condor; one Defense Department intelligence report dated 1 October 1976, noted that Latin American military officers bragged about it to their U.S. counterparts. The same report approvingly described Condor's "joint counterinsurgency operations" that aimed to "eliminate Marxist terrorist activities"; Argentina, it noted, created a special Condor team "structured much like a U.S. Special Forces Team." Material declassified in 2004 states that

"The declassified record shows that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...

 was briefed on Condor and its 'murder operations' on August 5, 1976, in a 14-page report from Shlaudeman. 'Internationally, the Latin generals look like our guys,' Shlaudeman cautioned. 'We are especially identified with Chile. It cannot do us any good.' Shlaudeman and his two deputies, William Luers and Hewson Ryan, recommended action. Over the course of three weeks, they drafted a cautiously worded demarche

Demarche

A démarche has come to refer either to# a line of action; move; countermove; maneuver, esp. in diplomatic relations, or# formal diplomatic representation of the official position, views, or wishes on a given subject from one government to another government or intergovernmental...

, approved by Kissinger, in which he instructed the U.S. ambassadors in the Southern Cone countries to meet with the respective heads of state about Condor. He instructed them to express 'our deep concern' about 'rumors' of 'plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad.'"http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/index.htm

Ultimately, the demarche was never delivered. Kornbluh and Dinges suggest that the decision not to send Kissinger's order was due to a cable sent by Assistant Secretary Harry Shlaudeman to his deputy in D.C which states "you can simply instruct the Ambassadors to take no further action, noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme." McSherry, adds, "According to [U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert] White, instructions from a secretary of state cannot be ignored unless there is a countermanding order received via a secret (CIA) backchannel."
Kornbluh and Dinges conclude that "The paper trail is clear: the State Department and the CIA had enough intelligence to take concrete steps to thwart Condor assassination planning. Those steps were initiated but never implemented." Shlaudeman's deputy Hewson Ryan later acknowledged in an oral history interview that the State Department was "remiss" in its handling of the case. "We knew fairly early on that the governments of the Southern Cone countries were planning, or at least talking about, some assassinations abroad in the summer of 1976. ... Whether if we had gone in, we might have prevented this, I don't know", he stated in reference to the Letelier-Moffitt bombing. "But we didn't."

A CIA document called Condor "a counter-terrorism organization" and noted that the Condor countries had a specialized telecommunications system called "CONDORTEL." A 1978 cable from the US ambassador to Paraguay, Robert White

Robert White (ambassador)

Robert E. White served as U.S. ambassador under different administrations. He is currently president of the Center for International Policy....

, to the Secretary of State Cyrus Vance

Cyrus Vance

Cyrus Roberts Vance was an American lawyer and United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980...

, was published on 6 March 2001 by the New York Times. The document was released in November 2000 by the Clinton administration under the Chile Declassification Project. In the cable Ambassador White reported a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who informed him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "[kept] in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone

Panama Canal Zone

The Panama Canal Zone was a unorganized U.S. territory located within the Republic of Panama, consisting of the Panama Canal and an area generally extending 5 miles on each side of the centerline, but excluding Panama City and Colón, which otherwise would have been partly within the limits of...

 which cover[ed] all of Latin America". According to Davalos, this installation was "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". Robert White feared that the US connection to Condor might be publicly revealed at a time when the assassination in the U.S.A. of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier

Orlando Letelier

Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...

 and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt

Ronni Moffitt

Ronni Moffitt , was a American political activist.-Early Life:She was born in Passaic, New Jersey as Ronni Susan Karpen on January 10, 1951 to Murray and Hilda Karpen. She was the oldest of three children including Harry Karpen and Michael Karpen. Her family owned a restaurant called "Karpen's" and...

 was being investigated. White cabled that "it would seem advisable to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest."

The "information exchange" (via telex

Telex

Telex may refer to:* Telex , , a communications network** Teleprinter, the device used on the above network* Telex , a Belgian pop group...

) included torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

 techniques (e.g. near-drowning, and playing recordings of victims who were being tortured to their families). This demonstrates that the US facilitated communications for Operation Condor, and has been called by J. Patrice McSherry

J. Patrice McSherry

-References:...

 (Long Island Univ.) "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."

In addition, an Argentine military source told a U.S. Embassy contact that the CIA was privy to Condor and had played a key role in setting up computerized links among the intelligence and operations units of the six Condor states.

Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...

, Secretary of State

United States Secretary of State

The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...

 in the Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 and Ford

Gerald Ford

Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...

 administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone

Southern Cone

Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...

 governments at the time and well aware of the Condor plan. According to the French newspaper L'Humanité

L'Humanité

L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...

, the first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

 groups, fascist movements such as the Triple A set up in Argentina by Juan Perón

Juan Perón

Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...

 and Isabel Martínez de Perón

Isabel Martínez de Perón

María Estela Martínez Cartas de Perón , better known as Isabel Martínez de Perón or Isabel Perón, is a former President of Argentina. She was also the third wife of another former President, Juan Perón...

's "personal secretary" José López Rega

José López Rega

José López Rega was Argentina's Minister of Social Welfare during the Peronist government started in 1973 by Juan Perón and continued after Perón's death in 1974 by his third wife and vice-president, Isabel Martínez de Perón , until the coup d'etat of 1976 that initiated the so-called National...

, and Rodolfo Almirón

Rodolfo Almirón

Rodolfo Almirón Sena was a former Argentine police officer and a leader of an extreme right-wing death squad known as the Triple A, operating in Argentina during the mid-1970s...

 (arrested in Spain in 2006).

On 31 May 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested that a summons be served on Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger

Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...

 while he was staying at the Hôtel Ritz

Hôtel Ritz Paris

The Hôtel Ritz is a grand palatial hotel in the heart of Paris, the 1st arrondissement. It overlooks the octagonal border of the Place Vendôme at number 15...

 in Paris. Loire wanted to question Kissinger as a witness for alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor and for possible US knowledge concerning the "disappearances" of 5 French nationals in Chile during military rule. Kissinger left Paris that evening, and Loire's inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department.

In July 2001, the Chilean high court granted investigating judge Juan Guzmán

Juan Guzmán Tapia

Juan Salvador Guzmán Tapia is a retired Chilean judge who gained international recognition for being the first judge to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on human rights charges, after Pinochet's return to Chile following more than a year of house arrest in London, in...

 the right to question Kissinger about the 1973 killing of American journalist Charles Horman

Charles Horman

Charles Horman was an American journalist and was one of the victims of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet, that deposed the socialist president, Salvador Allende, after bombing the Chilean presidential palace on September 11, 1973...

, whose execution at the hands of the Chilean military following the coup was dramatized in the 1982 Costa-Gavras

Costa-Gavras

Costa-Gavras, is a Greek filmmaker, who lives and works in France, best known for films with overt political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller, Z...

 film, Missing

Missing (film)

Missing is a 1982 American drama film directed by Costa Gavras, and starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Charles Cioffi and Janice Rule...

. The judge's questions were relayed to Kissinger via diplomatic routes but were not answered.

In August 2001, Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a letter rogatory

Letter Rogatory

A letter rogatory or letter of request is a formal request from a court to a foreign court for some type of judicial assistance. The most common remedies sought by letters rogatory are service of process and taking of evidence.-Service of process:...

 to the US State Department, in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty

Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty

A mutual legal assistance treaty is an agreement between two countries for the purpose of gathering and exchanging information in an effort to enforce public laws or criminal laws...

 (MLAT), requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judge's investigation of Operation Condor.

On 10 September 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court by the family of Gen. René Schneider

René Schneider

General René Schneider Chereau was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army at the time of the 1970 Chilean presidential election, when he was assassinated during a botched kidnapping attempt. His murder virtually assured Salvador Allende's eventual overthrow and death in a coup three years later...

, murdered former Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, asserting that Kissinger ordered Schneider's murder because he refused to endorse plans for a military coup. Schneider was killed by coup-plotters loyal to General Roberto Viaux

Roberto Viaux

Roberto Urbano Viaux Marambio was a Chilean Army General and the primary planner in two failed coup d'état attempts in Chile in 1969 and 1970...

 in a botched kidnapping attempt. As part of the suit, Schneider's two sons are attempting to sue Kissinger and then-CIA director Richard Helms

Richard Helms

Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...

 for $3 million.

On 16 February 2007, a request for the extradition of Kissinger was filed at the Supreme Court of Uruguay on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and disappeared by the dictatorial regime in 1976.

The "French connection"

French journalist Marie-Monique Robin

Marie-Monique Robin

Marie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist. She received the Albert Londres Prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, an expose about organ theft...

 found in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay

Quai d'Orsay

The Quai d'Orsay is a quai in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris, part of the left bank of the Seine, and the name of the street along it. The Quai becomes the Quai Anatole France east of the Palais Bourbon, and the Quai de Branly west of the Pont de l'Alma.The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs is...

, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires set up a "permanent French military mission" of officers who had fought in the Algerian War, and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Army. It continued until François Mitterrand

François Mitterrand

François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...

 was elected President of France in 1981. She showed how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...

's government secretly collaborated with Videla's junta

National Reorganization Process

The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...

 in Argentina and with Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

's regime in Chile. The first Argentine officers, among them Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to attend two-year courses at the Ecole de Guerre military school in 1957, two years before the Cuban Revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

 and when no Argentine guerrilla movement existed. "In practice", said Robin to Página/12

Página/12

Página/12 is a newspaper based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Página/12 was founded on May 25, 1987, by journalist Jorge Lanata in association with writer Osvaldo Soriano and investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky...

, "the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

 as the primary weapon of anti-subversive war in the concept of modern warfare." The annihilation decrees signed by Isabel Perón had been inspired by French texts. During the Battle of Algiers

Battle of Algiers

Battle of Algiers or Algiers expedition may refer to:* The Siege of Algiers by Spain leading to the establishment of the Peñón of Algiers* The Capture of Algiers by Aruj Barbarossa* The Capture of Algiers by Hayreddin Barbarossa...

, police forces were put under the authority of the Army, and in particular of the paratrooper

Paratrooper

Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land...

s, who generalized interrogation

Interrogation

Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...

 sessions, systematically using torture and then disappearances.

On 10 September 2003, French Green Party deputies Noël Mamère

Noël Mamère

Noël Mamère is a French singer, cyclist and politician.He rose to fame in the 1980s as a TV entertainer, in particular on Antenne 2....

, Martine Billard

Martine Billard

Martine Billard is a French politician and députée, member of the Parti de Gauche.Martine Billard entered politics in May 1968 with the "comité d'action lycéen"...

 and Yves Cochet

Yves Cochet

Yves Cochet is a French politician, member of The Greens. He was minister in the government of Lionel Jospin.He wrote Apocalypse pétrole which was published in 2005.-External links:*...

 petitioned for the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur

Édouard Balladur

Édouard Balladur is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 29 March 1993 to 10 May 1995.-Biography:Balladur was born in İzmir, Turkey, to an Armenian Catholic family with five children and long-standing ties to France...

. The only newspaper to report this was Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

. However, Deputy Roland Blum

Roland Blum

Roland Blum is a French conservative politician, member of the Union for a Popular Movement . Former student of the Institut d'études politiques d'Aix-en-Provence , he was elected deputy on 16 June 2002 in the Bouches-du-Rhône...

, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin, and in December 2003 published a 12-page report described by Robin as being in the utmost bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the Quai d'Orsay

Quai d'Orsay

The Quai d'Orsay is a quai in the VIIe arrondissement of Paris, part of the left bank of the Seine, and the name of the street along it. The Quai becomes the Quai Anatole France east of the Palais Bourbon, and the Quai de Branly west of the Pont de l'Alma.The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs is...

When French Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin

Dominique de Villepin

Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin is a French politician who served as the Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007....

 traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that there had been no cooperation between France and the military regimes.

Reporter Marie-Monique Robin said to L'Humanité

L'Humanité

L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...

 newspaper: "The French have systematized a military technique in the urban environment which would be copied and passed to Latin American dictatorships.". The methods employed during the 1957 Battle of Algiers were systematized and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires. Roger Trinquier

Roger Trinquier

Roger Trinquier was a French Army officer during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, serving mainly in airborne and Special forces units...

's famous book on counter-insurgency

Counter-insurgency

A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...

 had a very strong influence in South America. Robin said that she was shocked to learn that the French intelligence agency Direction de surveillance du territoire (DST) communicated to the DINA the names of refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno), all of whom were killed. "Of course, this puts the French government in the dock, and Giscard d'Estaing

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...

, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, at the same time received political refugees with open arms, and collaborated with the dictatorships."

Marie-Monique Robin also showed ties between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the Roman Catholic fundamentalist organization Cité catholique

Cité catholique

The Cité Catholique is a Traditionalist Catholic organisation created in 1946 by Jean Ousset, originally a follower of Charles Maurras and Jean Masson , not to be confused with Jacques Desoubrie, who also used the pseudonym Jean Masson...

 created by Jean Ousset

Jean Ousset

Jean Ousset was a French ideologist of National Catholicism born in Porto, Portugal. He was an activist of the Action française monarchist movement in the 1930s, and personal secretary of its leader, Charles Maurras...

, a former secretary of Charles Maurras

Charles Maurras

Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Française, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras' ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and "nationalisme...

 (founder of the royalist Action Française

Action Française

The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...

 movement). La Cité published a review, Le Verbe, which influenced military officers during the Algerian War, notably by justifying their use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the Cité catholique established itself in Argentina and set up cells in the Army. It greatly expanded during the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía

Juan Carlos Onganía

Juan Carlos Onganía Carballo was de facto president of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as military dictator after toppling, in a coup d’état self-named Revolución Argentina , the democratically elected president Arturo Illia .-Economic and social...

, in particular in 1969. The key figure of the Cité catholique was priest Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor and had been the spiritual guide of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in Franquist Spain. This Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army explains, according to Robin, the importance and duration of Franco-Argentine cooperation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Marcel Lefebvre

Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre was a French Roman Catholic archbishop. Following a career as an Apostolic Delegate for West Africa and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, he took the lead in opposing the changes within the Church associated with the Second Vatican Council.In 1970,...

, founder of the Society of St. Pius X

Society of St. Pius X

The Society of Saint Pius X is an international Traditionalist Catholic organisation, founded in 1970 by the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre...

 in 1970 and excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest in La Reja. There, a French priest declared to Marie-Monique Robin: "to save the soul of a Communist priest, one must kill him." There she met Luis Roldan, former Under Secretary of Religion under Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem

Carlos Saúl Menem is an Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. He is currently an Argentine National Senator for La Rioja Province.-Early life:...

 (President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999), who was presented by Dominique Lagneau, the priest in charge of the monastery, as "Mr. Cité catholique in Argentina". Bruno Genta

Jordán Bruno Genta

Jordán Bruno Genta, was an Argentine writer and educator, widely considered the ideologue of the Argentine extreme right-wing.In his youth, Genta actively campaigned against several attempts at education reform, fearing that the changes would dilute the influence of Catholic teachings...

 and Juan Carlos Goyeneche

Juan Carlos Goyeneche

Juan Carlos Goyeneche was an Argentine Catholic nationalist politician. Also highly sympathetic to Nazism, during the Second World War Goyeneche travelled to Nazi Germany where he met a number of leading figures...

 represent this ideology.

Argentine Admiral Luis María Mendía

Luis María Mendía

Luis María Mendía was the Argentine Chief of Naval Operations in 1976-77, with the rank of vice-admiral. According to confessions gathered by Horacio Verbitsky and made by Adolfo Scilingo , Luis María Mendía was the architect of the "death flight" assassination method whereby the Argentine state...

, who had theorized the practice of "death flights", testified in January 2007 before Argentine judges that a French intelligence "agent", Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the abduction of two French nuns, Léonie Duquet

Leonie Duquet

Léonie Duquet was a French nun who was killed by the military regime of Argentine President Jorge Rafael Videla during the Dirty War.-Biography:...

 and Alice Domont, who were later murdered. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction but admitted being a former member of the OAS, and having escaped for Argentina after the March 1962 Evian Accords

Évian Accords

The Évian Accords comprise a treaty which was signed in 1962 in Évian-les-Bains, France by France and the F.L.N. . The Accords put an end to the Algerian War with a formal cease-fire proclaimed for March 19, and formalized the idea of cooperative exchange between the two countries...

 that ended the Algerian War (1954–62). Referring to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads – the French School (Les escadrons de la mort – l'école française), Luis María Mendía asked of the Argentine Court that former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...

, former French premier Pierre Messmer

Pierre Messmer

Pierre Joseph Auguste Messmer was a French Gaullist politician. He served as Minister of Armies under Charles de Gaulle from 1960 to 1969 – the longest serving since Étienne François, duc de Choiseul under Louis XV – and then as Prime Minister under Georges Pompidou from 1972 to 1974...

, former French ambassador to Buenos Aires François de la Gorce, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be called before the court. Besides this "French connection" he has also accused former head of state Isabel Perón and former ministers Carlos Ruckauf

Carlos Ruckauf

Carlos Federico Ruckauf is a Peronist politician in Argentina, member of the Justicialist Party.-Biography:Carlos Federico Ruckauf was born in the western Buenos Aires suburb of Ramos Mejía. His parents separated when he was seven, and he lived in Mar del Plata, Salta, and Buenos Aires during the...

 and Antonio Cafiero

Antonio Cafiero

Antonio Francisco Cafiero is an Argentine Justicialist Party politician.-Biography:Cafiero was born in Buenos Aires. He joined Catholic Action in 1938, and enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, becoming President of the Students' Association...

, who had signed the "anti-subversion decrees" before Videla's 1976 coup d'état. According to ESMA

ESMA

The Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics , commonly referred to by its abbreviation ESMA, is a facility of the Argentine Navy that was employed as an illegal detention center during the dictatorial rule of the National Reorganization Process...

 survivor Graciela Daleo, this is another tactic which claims that these crimes were legitimised by the 1987 Obediencia Debida law, and that they were also covered by Isabel Perón's "anti-subversion decrees" (which, if true, would give them a veneer of legality, despite torture being forbidden by the Argentine Constitution) Alfredo Astiz

Alfredo Astiz

Alfredo Ignacio Astiz was a Commander, intelligence office and maritime commando in the Argentine Navy during the dictatorial rule of Jorge Rafael Videla in the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional...

 also referred before the courts to the "French connection".

Legal actions

Chilean judge Juan Guzman

Juan Guzmán Tapia

Juan Salvador Guzmán Tapia is a retired Chilean judge who gained international recognition for being the first judge to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on human rights charges, after Pinochet's return to Chile following more than a year of house arrest in London, in...

, who had arraigned Pinochet at his return to Chile after his arrest in London, started procedures against some 30 torturers, including former head of the DINA Manuel Contreras

Manuel Contreras

Juan Manuel Guillermo Contreras Sepúlveda is a Chilean military officer and the former head of DINA, Chile's secret police during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. As head of DINA he was the most powerful and feared man in the country, after Pinochet...

, for the disappearance of 20 Chilean victims of the Condor plan.

In Argentina the CONADEP human rights commission led by writer Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

 investigated human rights abuses during the "Dirty War", and the 1985 Trial of the Juntas found top officers who ran the military governments guilty of acts of state terrorism

State terrorism

State terrorism may refer to acts of terrorism conducted by a state against a foreign state or people. It can also refer to acts of violence by a state against its own people.-Definition:...

. However, the amnesty laws (Ley de Obediencia Debida

Ley de Obediencia Debida

Ley de Obediencia Debida was a law passed by the National Congress of Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional . Formally, this law is referred to by number Ley de Obediencia Debida (Spanish, Law of Due Obedience) was a law passed by the...

 and Ley de Punto Final

Ley de Punto Final

Ley de Punto Final was a law passed by the National Congress of Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional . Formally, this law is referred to by number Ley de Punto Final (Spanish, roughly translated Full Stop Law) was a law passed by the...

) put an end to the trials until the amnesties themselves were repealed by the Argentine Supreme Court in 2003. Criminals such as Alfredo Astiz

Alfredo Astiz

Alfredo Ignacio Astiz was a Commander, intelligence office and maritime commando in the Argentine Navy during the dictatorial rule of Jorge Rafael Videla in the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional...

, sentenced in absentia in France for the disappearance of the two French nuns Alice Domont and Léonie Duquet

Leonie Duquet

Léonie Duquet was a French nun who was killed by the military regime of Argentine President Jorge Rafael Videla during the Dirty War.-Biography:...

 will now have to answer for their involvement in Condor.

Chilean Enrique Arancibia Clavel

Enrique Arancibia Clavel

Enrique Arancibia was a Chilean DINA agent, who resided in unofficial exile in Buenos Aires after the assassination of Chilean Army Chief of Staff René Schneider on 25 October 1970. He was arrested by Argentine intelligence officers shortly after the extradition of Michael Townley to the US, and...

 was condemned in Argentina for the assassination of Carlos Prats and of his wife.
Former Uruguayan president Juan María Bordaberry

Juan María Bordaberry

Juan María Bordaberry Arocena was a Uruguayan politician and cattle rancher, who first served as President from 1972 until 1976, including as a dictator from 1973 until his ouster in a 1976 coup...

, his minister of Foreign Affairs and six military officers, responsible for the disappearance in Argentina in 1976 of opponents to the Uruguayan regime, were arrested in 2006.

On 3 August 2007 General Raúl Iturriaga

Raúl Iturriaga

Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann is a Chilean Army general and a former deputy director of the DINA, the Chilean secret police under the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship...

, former head of DINA, was captured in the Chilean town of Viña del Mar

Viña del Mar

Viña del Mar , is a city and commune on central Chile's Pacific coast. Its long stretches of white sandy beaches are a major attraction for national and international tourists. The city is Chile's main tourist attraction. Known as "La Ciudad Jardín" , Viña del Mar is a Chilean Municipality located...

 on the Pacific coast. He had previously been a fugitive from a five-year jail term, after being sentenced for the kidnapping of Luis Dagoberto San Martin, a 21-year-old opponent of Pinochet. Martín had been captured in 1974 and taken to a DINA detention centre, from which he "disappeared." Iturriaga was also wanted in Argentina for the assassination of General Prats.

According to French newspaper L'Humanité

L'Humanité

L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...

 "in most of those countries legal action against the authors of crimes of 'lese-humanity' from the 1970s to 1990 owes more to flaws in the amnesty laws than to a real will of the governments in power, which, on the contrary, wave the flag of 'national reconciliation'. It is sad to say that two of the pillars of the Condor Operation, Alfredo Stroessner

Alfredo Stroessner

Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda, whose name is also spelled Strössner or Strößner , was a Paraguayan military officer and dictator from 1954 to 1989...

 and Augusto Pinochet, never paid for their crimes and died without ever answering charges about the 'disappeared' – who continue to haunt the memory of people who had been crushed by fascist brutality.".

See also

• Operation Phoenix
  Operation Phoenix
  -Military-related:* Phoenix Program, CIA military, intelligence, and internal security program in the Vietnam War* Vela Incident, suspected 1979 Israeli-South African nuclear test allegedly codenamed "Operation Phenix"...
  
  
• Dirty War
  Dirty War
  The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
  
  
• Amnesty Law
  Amnesty law
  An amnesty law is any law that retroactively exempts a select group of people, usually military leaders and government leaders, from criminal liability for crimes committed.Most allegations involve human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.-History:...
  
  
• Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
  Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships
  This is a list of movies that, in one way or another, are closely related to the military dictatorships in Latin America that appeared during the context of the Cold War.-Argentina:* Funny Little Dirty War * The Official Story...
  
  
• The War on Democracy
  The War on Democracy
  The War on Democracy is a 2007 documentary film directed by Christopher Martin and John Pilger. Focusing on the political state of Latin America, the film is intended as a rebuke of both the United States' intervention in foreign countries' domestic politics, and its "War on Terrorism"...
  
   (documentary)
• National Reorganization Process
  National Reorganization Process
  The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...
  
  
• Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay

South American intelligence agencies

• DINA
• DIM
  Dirección de Inteligencia Militar
  The Dirección de Inteligencia Militar was the military intelligence agency of Venezuela.According to the New York Times, as of June 3, 2008, DIM has been replaced with a new agency, the General Counterintelligence Office.-See also:...
  
  
• SNI
  National Intelligence Service of Brazil
  The Serviço Nacional de Informações, or SNI of Brazil was an intelligence agency formed by the Castelo Branco government in 1964. SNI was disbanded for a time and later resumed operations under the name Agência Brasileira de Inteligência.-History:Originally, the SNI was a civilian agency under the...
  
  
• SIDE
  Secretaría de Inteligencia
  Secretaría de Inteligencia is the premier intelligence agency of the Argentine Republic and head of its National Intelligence System....
  
  

Some participants in Operation Condor

• Stefano Delle Chiaie
  Stefano Delle Chiaie
  Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...
  
  , Italian operative, also an alleged operative for Gladio "stay-behind" NATO clandestine structure
• Michael Townley
  Michael Townley
  Michael Vernon Townley is a US citizen currently living in the United States under terms of the federal witness protection program. A Central Intelligence Agency agent and operative of the Chilean secret police, DINA, Townley confessed, was convicted, and served 62 months in prison in the United...
  
  , US expatriate, DINA agent involved in Orlando Letelier
  Orlando Letelier
  Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
  
  's 1976 murder in Washington, D.C.
• Luis Posada Carriles
  Luis Posada Carriles
  Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist and former Central Intelligence Agency agent....
  
  , a Cuban anti-Castro volunteer who participated in Operation Condor and worked for the Venezuelan DISIP
  Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención
  thumb|250px|right|El Helicoide building in Caracas - old headquarters of SEBINSEBIN, the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia , is the premier intelligence agency in Venezuela...
  
   (currently in the US)
• Virgilio Paz Romero
  Virgilio Paz Romero
  Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various anti-communist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C...
  
  , who participated to Orlando Letelier's 1976 assassination and the attack against Bernardo Leighton in Rome
• Alianza Anticomunista Argentina
  Alianza Anticomunista Argentina
  The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance was a right-wing death squad active in Argentina during the mid-1970s, particularly active under Isabel Perón's rule . Initially associated with the Peronist right, the organisation was bitterly in conflict with the Peronist left and other left organizations...
  
   (aka Triple A)
• Italian secret services
  SISMI
  Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977-2007....
  
  

Prominent victims of Operation Condor

A few well-known victims of Operation Condor:

• Martín Almada
  Martín Almada
  Martín Almada is a lawyer, writer and educationalist from Paraguay. A noted dissident and human rights activist, he was a prisoner of the Alfredo Stroessner regime.-Biography:...
  
  , educator in Paraguay, arrested in 1974 and tortured for three years
• Víctor Olea Alegría
  Víctor Olea Alegría
  Víctor Olea Alegría was a member of Chile’s Partido Socialista.Olea lived in Santiago, Chile. He was detained by “security agents” on 11 September 1974, and became one of the "detenidos desaparecidos". Manuel Contreras was convicted in 2002 for his abduction.-External links:*...
  
  , member of the Socialist Party, arrested on 11 September, 1974 and "disappeared" (head of DINA Manuel Contreras was convicted in 2002 for this crime)
• General Carlos Prats
  Carlos Prats
  General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...
  
  , who immediately preceded Pinochet at the head of the Chilean army, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1974
• William Beausire
  William Beausire
  William Robert Beausire was a British stockbroker with dual British and Chilean nationality, abducted while in transit in Buenos Aires airport in November 1974, then taken to a torture centre in Chile and never seen since...
  
  , businessman with dual British and Chilean nationality, abducted in transit in Buenos Aires airport in November 1974, taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture centre in Chile and never seen since http://www.btinternet.com/~donald.macdonald/chile1.htm.
• Bernardo Leighton
  Bernardo Leighton
  Bernardo Leighton Guzmán was a Chilean Christian Democrat who was targeted by Operation Condor.In 1937, President Arturo Alessandri Palma appointed him as Employment minister....
  
  , Christian-Democrat who narrowly escaped murder in Rome in 1975 organized by Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie
  Stefano Delle Chiaie
  Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...
  
  
• Carlos Altamirano
  Carlos Altamirano
  Carlos Altamirano Orrego is a lawyer and one of the most influential politicians of Chilean socialism. He was the general secretary of the Chilean Socialist Party between 1971 and 1979. Before that, he was deputy from 1961 to 1965 and senator from 1965 to 1973...
  
  , leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder by Pinochet in 1975
• Attempted assassination against Emilio Aragonés, the Cuban ambassador in Buenos Aires, in 1975, organized by leader of the CORU, Orlando Bosch
  Orlando Bosch
  Orlando Bosch Ávila was a Cuban exile militant, former Central Intelligence Agency-backed operative, and head of Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, which the FBI has described as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization". Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called...
  
  
• Sheila Cassidy
  Sheila Cassidy
  Dr. Sheila Cassidy is an English doctor, known for her work in the hospice movement, as a writer and as someone who, by publicising her own history as a torture survivor, drew attention to human rights abuse in Chile in the 1970s.-Early life:Cassidy grew up in Sydney, and attended the Our Lady of...
  
  , British physician, arrested in Chile in 1975 and tortured for medical treatment to an opponent of the regime.
• Volodia Teitelboim
  Volodia Teitelboim
  Volodia Valentín Teitelboim Volosky was a Chilean lawyer, politician and author.Born in Chillán to Jewish immigrants , Teitelboim was interested in literature from an early age...
  
  , member of the Communist Party of Chile
  Communist Party of Chile
  The Communist Party of Chile is a Chilean political party inspired by the thoughts of Karl Marx and Lenin. It was founded in 1922, as the continuation of the Socialist Workers Party, and in 1934 it established its youth wing, the Communist Youth of Chile .In the last legislative elections in Chile...
  
  , targeted for murder alongside Carlos Altamirano, in Mexico in 1976
• "Disappearance" of two Cuban diplomats in Argentina, Crecencio Galañega Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias who transited through Orletti detention center in Buenos Aires (9 August, 1976 – see Lista de centros clandestinos de detención (Argentina)); both were questioned by the SIDE and the DINA, with the knowledge of the FBI and the CIA
• Andrés Pascal Allende
  Andrés Pascal Allende
  Andrés Pascal Allende is a Chilean Marxist revolutionary and nephew of former President Salvador Allende. He is of Basque and Belgian descent.He was born in Santiago, the son of Gastón Pascal Lyon and of Laura Allende Gossens...
  
  , nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR
  Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
  Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
  
  , escaped assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976
• Orlando Letelier
  Orlando Letelier
  Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
  
  , murdered in 1976 in Washington, D.C. with his assistant Ronnie Moffitt
• Christian-Democrat and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970 Eduardo Frei Montalva
  Eduardo Frei Montalva
  Eduardo Frei Montalva was a Chilean political leader of world stature. In his long political career, he was Minister of Public Works, president of his Christian Democratic Party, senator, President of the Senate, and president of Chile from 1964 to 1970...
  
  , who may have been poisoned in the early 1980s according to current investigations
• former Bolivian president Juan José Torres
  Juan José Torres
  Juan José Torres González was a Bolivian socialist politician and military leader. He served as President of Bolivia from October 7, 1970 to August 21, 1971. He was popularly known as "J.J."...
  
  , assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976
• Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz
  Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz
  Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz was a Uruguayan political figure, who died by assassination in the framework of Operation Condor. He arried with Matilde Rodriguez Larreta , had 5 children: Mark, John Paul, Magdalena, Facundo and Matthew.-Background and political role:He served as a Uruguayan deputy, and was...
  
  , former Uruguayan deputy, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976
• Zelmar Michelini
  Zelmar Michelini
  Zelmar Michelini was a Uruguayan reporter and politician, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976 as part of Operation Condor....
  
  , former Uruguayan deputy, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1976
• Carmelo Soria
  Carmelo Soria
  Carmelo Soria was a Spanish-Chilean United Nations diplomat. A member of the CEPAL in the 1970s, he was assassinated by Chile's DINA agents as a part of Operation Condor...
  
  , Spanish diplomat, civil servant of the CEPAL (a UN organism), assassinated on 21 July 1976
• Jorge Zaffaroni and Maria Emilia Islas de Zaffaroni, maybe members of the Tupamaros
  Tupamaros
  Tupamaros, also known as the MLN-T , was an urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. The MLN-T is inextricably linked to its most important leader, Raúl Sendic, and his brand of social politics...
  
  , "disappeared" in Buenos Aires on 29 September, 1976, kidnapped by the Batallón de Inteligencia 601
  Batallón de Inteligencia 601
  The Batallón de Inteligencia 601 was a special military intelligence service of the Argentine Army whose structure was set up in the late 1970s, active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor, and disbanded in 2000...
  
  , who handed them out to the Uruguayan OCOAS (Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Anti-Subversivas)
• Dagmar Ingrid Hagelin
  Dagmar Hagelin
  Dagmar Hagelin was an Argentine-Swedish girl who disappeared during the Dirty War on January 27, 1977 and is presumed to have been arrested by security forces in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and murdered in a case of mistaken identity...
  
  , 17-year-old Swedish girl shot in the back by Alfredo Astiz
  Alfredo Astiz
  Alfredo Ignacio Astiz was a Commander, intelligence office and maritime commando in the Argentine Navy during the dictatorial rule of Jorge Rafael Videla in the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional...
  
   in 1977 and later murdered
• Poet Juan Gelman
  Juan Gelman
  Juan Gelman is an Argentine poet. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956. He won the Cervantes Prize in 2007, the most important in Spanish literature...
  
  's son and daughter-in-law (whose baby was stolen by the Uruguayan military)

• US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations between 1970s threats on his life and Operation Condor

Archives and reports

• National Security Archives, a NGO which publicizes the few CIA documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act
• "Terror archives
  Terror archives
  The "Archives of Terror" were found on December 22, 1992, by a lawyer, Dr. Martín Almada, and a human-rights activist and judge, José Agustín Fernández, in a police station in a suburb of Asunción , capital of Paraguay. Fernández was looking for files on a former prisoner...
  
  ", discovered in 1992 in Paraguay, which permitted opening of prosecution cases against former or active militaries involved in Operation Condor
• Rettig Report
  Rettig Report
  The Rettig Report, officially The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report, is a 1991 report by a commission designated by then President Patricio Aylwin encompassing human rights abuses resulting in death or disappearance that occurred in Chile during the years of military rule...
  
  
• Valech Report
  Valech Report
  The Valech Report was a record of abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. The report was published on November 29, 2004 and detailed the results of a six-month investigation. A revised version was released on June 1, 2005...
  
  
• Memoriaviva (Complete list of Victims, Torture Centres and Criminals – in Spanish)

Detention and torture centers

• Colonia Dignidad
  Colonia Dignidad
  Villa Baviera , formerly known as Colonia Dignidad is a hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region, Chile. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German...
  
  , a bizarre and secretive German enclave in Chile, active until 2005, when it was put under state control
• Esmeralda (BE-43)
  Esmeralda (BE-43)
  Esmeralda is a steel-hulled four-masted barquentine tall ship of the Chilean Navy, currently the second tallest and longest sailing ship in the world.- Construction :The ship is the sixth to carry the name Esmeralda...
  
  
• Estadio Nacional de Chile
  Estadio Nacional de Chile
  The Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos is the national stadium of Chile, and is located in the Ñuñoa district of Santiago). It is the largest stadium in Chile with an official capacity of 47,000, and is part of a 62 ha sporting complex which also features tennis courts, an aquatics center, a...
  
  
• Villa Grimaldi
  Villa Grimaldi
  Villa Grimaldi was a complex of buildings used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners by DINA, the Chilean secret police, during the government of Augusto Pinochet. The complex was located in Peñalolén, in the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978...
  
  

Automotores Orletti

Other operations and strategies related to Condor

• Operation Colombo
  Operation Colombo
  Operation Colombo was an operation undertaken by the DINA in 1975. The operation involved the disappearance of political dissidents. At least 119 people are alleged to have been abducted and later killed by state forces in the secret operation...
  
  , for which Augusto Pinochet was being judged at the time of his death
• Caravan of Death
  Caravan of Death
  The Caravan of Death was a Chilean Army death squad that, following the Chilean coup of 1973, flew by helicopters from south to north of Chile between September 30 and October 22, 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75...
  
  , carried on a few weeks after the 1973 coup

Fictional references

• Don Winslow
  Don Winslow
  Don Winslow is an American author most recognized for his crime and mystery novels. Many of his books are set in California. He has published a series of five novels that have a private investigator named Neal Carey as their main character...
  
  's 2005 book The Power of the Dog
  The Power of the Dog
  The Power of the Dog is a 2005 crime/thriller novel by Don Winslow, based on the DEA's involvement with the War on Drugs. The book was published after six years of writing and research by the author....
  
   is based on the actions and some of the consequences of Operation Condor.
• In DC Comics
  DC Comics
  DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
  
  , the father of the superheroine Fire was a key figure in Operation Condor.
• Nathan Englander's novel The Ministry of Special Cases is set in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. Its main characters are Kaddish and Lillian, a Jewish couple whose son Pato is disappeared shortly after the Videla junta takes power. Faber and Faber, London, 2007.

External links

• Operation Condor on Nizkor
  Equipo Nizkor
  ----Equipo Nizkor is a human rights NGO concerned mostly about events in Latin America, but also Europe. It is affiliated with Derechos Human Rights, Serpaj Europe and the Global Internet Liberty Campaign...
  
  's website
• Memoriaviva (Complete list of Victims, Torture Centres and Criminals – in Spanish)
• Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, by J. Patrice McSherry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)
• The Condor Years – How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents
• Ed Koch Threatened with Assassination in 1976
• Plan Condor on Disinfopedia
• Nacimiento del Operativo Cóndor, article in Spanish by Dr Martín Almada on how the enquiry of his case led to the discover of the Lambaré files.
• Operation Condor – John Dinges John Dinges
  John Dinges
  John Dinges was special correspondent for Time, Washington Post and ABC Radio in Chile. With a group of Chilean journalists, he cofounded the Chilean magazine APSI...
  
   is a reporter, author of several books about Operation Condor. He has worked as a correspondent for the Washington Post in South America and is the former director of NPR
  NPR
  NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
  
  .