December 29, 2001
Narco News 2001
A Narco News Global Alert
INTERPOL
Seeks
Bolivia's
Banzer
General
Cancels
Washington
Trip
Argentina Presses
Charges
Italy Has Collected
Evidence
Mrs. Banzer Accused
in Spain
Narco News Commentary: The
complicity of United States media correspondents in Latin America
in the silence that protects those war criminals supported by
Washington has never been clearer than this week.
Buenos Aires, Argentina,
is crawling with U.S. correspondents, due to the recent upheavals
caused by the failure of the dollarization of the Argentine economy
that had been imposed by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, and led Argentine president Fernando de la Rua
to resign and flee.
But has a single United
States newspaper or North American wire service reported this
inconvenient news in English?
No, and through its silence,
the North American media -- and its inauthentic journalists,
as individuals -- make themselves complicit in crimes against
humanity.
For example, how proud
can the Washington Post's Marcela Sanchez be, today, of
her November
30th puff piece on Banzer's hand-picked successor, Jorge Quiroga, now that Quiroga impedes INTERPOL's
extradition warrant against his former boss?
Or, at the New York Times
Buenos Aires bureau, where are the official hitmen who pose as
"journalists," Larry Rohter and Clifford Krauss, who
purportedly are assigned to report the news from this region?
It is as if the arrest
warrant comes for them too: they are in hiding from this story.
The Bolivian government,
headed by Banzer's former Vice President and protege Jorge Quiroga,
continues to give haven to this war criminal, who, according
to the evidence collected in Argentina, Italy and Spain, participated
in an international plot to detain, torture, disappear and assassinate
opposition leaders, and, in those cases where the leaders were
young mothers, conspired to kidnap their infant children and
sell them on the black market.
This story is hard news,
and not only because an arrest warrant has been issued for a
former head of State.
The element of this story
that gives it currency is how today's regime in Bolivia, and
its presiding
Viceroy -- US Ambassador Manuel Rocha -- are committing the crime of obstruction of
justice.
To Washington, Banzer
must be protected at all costs, lest he spill the secrets of
the Narco-State and those who protected him as he built it. As
a military general, a dictator and a president, Banzer presided
over the development of the South American model for the modern
Narco-State: the denial of democracy and civil liberties in the
name of the "war on drugs," while allowing military
and government operatives to control and profit off the illicit
cocaine trade; a model that Quiroga and his Viceroy Rocha preside
over today.
The international arrest
warrant and prosecution of Banzer opens a window to the darkest
secrets of the US-imposed "war on drugs": a "war"
that requires brutal repression and the prevention of democracy
in our hemisphere. Today, Narco News publishes a new translation
of various stories from the national daily La Razón
in Bolivia's capital of La Paz. To which we add and declare:
Those "journalists" who cover-up the hard news about
war crimes will be remembered by humanity as war criminals, too.
From somewhere in a country
called América,
Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
From the daily La Razón,
La Paz, Bolivia
Banzer
Cancels Washington Trip
Interpol
Issues Arrest Warrant
The
ex-president has decided to cancel
his trip to Washington DC and will receive his next chemotherapy
session in the Foianini Clinic of Santa Cruz. Attorney Ivan Aleman
will be in charge of the General's legal defense.
At 2:30 p.m. yesterday, Interpol Bolivia
received the arrest warrant against General Hugo Banzer. Interpol
Argentina made the request:
"Solicitation for
preventive detention. Goal of extradition of citizen Banzer Suarez,
Hugo. Born in the state of Santa Cruz. Birthdate, May 10, 1926.
Son of Cesar Banzer and Griselda Suarez. Military official. Argentine
Identity Card # 10729834 DNI. Argentine # 92392607. Ex president
of Bolivia. Required by Federal Criminal Judge Rodolfo Canicoba
Corral."
That is the text of the communication
sent from Buenos Aires to the National Interpol Office in La
Paz.
Banzer has an Argentine National Identity
Card, that he obtained when the Military College gave him a scholarship
to study in that country's military institution.
After receiving this warrant, the director
of Interpol, Colonel Alberto Arroyo, sent it to the Foreign Minister's
office that, for its part, must send it to the Supreme Court
and the General Command of the Bolivian Police.
In spite of the arrest warrant, Interpol
can not execute the warrant because it is for an ex President,
according to Colonel Arroyo, who said that the decision is in
the hands of the Supreme Court of Justice.
Upon learning of the situation, the leaders
of the ADN (Nationalist Democratic Action party), Guillermo Fortun,
Jorge Landivar, Ramon Prada and Banzer's youngest daughter met
to study the current situation.
"The General is not alone. We will
defend him as required," said Fortun, Executive Secretary
of the AND, who said that the warrant is not an order, but a
request for capture, that cannot be executive because it lacks
various legal requirements, among them an additional request
to the Foreign Minister…
Extradition
to Argentina Has Legal Basis
An international
crime treaty from 1889 is still in effect
The
former Bolivian justice minister and
United Nations advisor in Guatemala, Rene Blattman, said yesterday
that Argentina has standing to ask Bolivia to capture and extradite
ex president Hugo Banzer because there is an international crime
treaty that both countries signed in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1889.
"The Supreme court can only approve
or reject the conditions of extradition, but cannot issue a judgment
against it, because there are no pressing in Bolivia against
Hugo Banzer," he said. Blattman said that the treaty between
the two countries carries obligations in the judicial arena,
and thus "one State can not deny petitions of the other."
He added that this treaty allows international
capture, and establishes penalties of up to two years in prison
for those charged. To not comply with it would bring international
sanctions upon the country. The Argentine Federal Judge Rodolfo
Canicoba Corrall asked for Banzer's capture on Wednesday and
for his extradition to Argentina for alleged participation in
Operation Condor.
This is the same accusation that led to
the incarceration of ex president Rafael Videla of Argentina
and the extradition warrant against Augusto Pinochet of Chile
and Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay.
There is evidence
against the General in Italy
Witnesses: The Bolivian Permanent Assembly of Human Rights
has information, although it did not specify, about testimony
collected in Italy against ex president Hugo Banzer Suarez.
Non-Prosecutable Crimes: The documents and verbal testimony in Italy involve
the ex president in crimes against humanity that don't correspond
to international law, the Human Rights office said.
Without Cause: The evidence that was presented against the ex
President still has not been processed by any Italian judicial
agency. No case has been opened, but charges have not been ruled
out.
Vice:
The family members of those detained, persecuted and tortured
during the 1970s want to avoid that Banzer could use an argument
that he can't be judged in two different countries for the same
crime.
Banzer's
Wife Is Accused in Spain
Repression: Carla Rutilo Artes has filed a complaint against
the former First Lady, who in 1976 was responsible for the kidnapping
of newborn children.
The pain that was born in 1976 has now
become a prosecution. Carla Rutilo Artes accuses, 25 years later,
her captors and Operation Condor.
She has filed charges before the justice
system of Spain against different Bolivian authorities, among
them Hugo Banzer and Yolanda Prada de Banzer.
The ex First Lady of the Nation was accused
before Judge Baltasar Garzon of being involved in the delivery
of Carla to the Argentina dictatorship, that in 1976 murdered
her mother, Graciela Rutilo.
The charges were filed four years ago
before the same judge that ordered the capture and extradition
of ex Chilean president Augusto Pinochet…
"Banzer is accused of the illegal
delivery of my mother to Argentina, the kidnapping of my mother,
crimes against humanity such as torture, assassination and disappearance,"
said Carla Rutilo Artes, interviewed in Madrid, Spain.
She gave testimony to Judge Garzon, who
has just concluded the instruction phase of the legal process,
after receiving hundreds of statements from witnesses and plaintiffs
in Argentina, Brasil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.
"Mrs. Yolanda Prada de Banzer was
accused. Her direct and indirect participation is abundantly
clear. We know that Mrs. Prada, like Banzer, was involved in
what happened. For example, I was kidnapped as an orphan upon
orders of the Interior Minister."
Carla, when she was just a few months
old, was pulled from the arms of her mother and placed in a State
home for minors. Her name was changed to Nora Nemtala. There
she lived until she was returned to her mother in 1976. Both
were delivered to the Argentina dictatorship. Later, Carla's
mother disappeared. Months before, her father was killed….
The orphan kidnappings in this country
were headed by the National Social Action Board of the Presidency,
an agency headed by Yolanda Prada de Banzer.
"She allowed that a child went unprotected
by the law. My case is the best documented that there is, and
is proof that, yes, Operation Condor did exist in the 1970s."
Now 26 years old, Carla Rutilo doesn't
cry as she did when an orphan two decades and a half a go. Now
she can laugh and "thanks God" that a judge has ordered
the international capture of Hugo Banzer.
War
Criminals with Press Passes Exposed Here