Chilean police arrest fugitive Argentine judge

[Judi Lynn]

Chilean police arrest fugitive Argentine judge
Saturday, 25 February 2012 02:17

SANTIAGO: A fugitive judge accused of human rights violations during Argentina's 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship was arrested Friday in Chile.

"Otilio Romano was arrested in Renaca this Friday at noon and was made available to the Supreme Court," a Chilean police source told AFP.

Romano entered Chile August 24 seeking political asylum and was given an eight-month visa. He was declared a fugitive the next month after failing to respond to an Argentine court summons.

Chilean Supreme Court judge Adalis Oyarzun issued the arrest warrant after examining an extradition request from Argentina, a judicial source told AFP.

More:
http://www.brecorder.com/world/south-america/47150-chilean-police-arrest-fugitive-argentine-judge-.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Elliott Abrams' Dark History in Latin America and the Struggle for Justice

Elliott Abrams' Dark History in Latin America and the Struggle for Justice
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Friday, 03 February 2012 19:07

Elliott Abrams, a former high level State Department official during the 1980s, testified last week that the Reagan administration knew that Argentina's military junta was systematically stealing babies from murdered and jailed democracy activists and giving them to right-wing families friendly to the regime.

In a meeting with the Junta's ambassador in Washington on December 3, 1982, Abrams suggested that the dictatorship could "improve its image" by creating a process with the Catholic Church of returning the children, some of whom were born in secret torture chambers, to their legitimate families. The contents of this meeting were recorded in a memo Abrams wrote, which was declassified by the State Department in 2002 and is now a key piece of evidence against former junta officials in this high profile trial.

“While the disappeared were dead, these children were alive and this was in a sense the gravest humanitarian problem,” Abrams read from his cable via videoconference testimony to a federal court in Buenos Aires. But this didn't deter the State Department at the time from granting Argentina certification indicating that the country's human rights record was improving.

Alan Iud, a lawyer representing The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who claim that as many as 500 children were stolen, said that Abrams' testimony “exceeded our expectations.” However, Abrams' and the Reagan Administration's relationship with the military junta was not adversarial, something that has been lost in the story, if not the trial. In fact, in 1978, even before being elected president, Ronald Reagan wrote a column in The Miami News attacking President Jimmy Carter's criticisms of Argentina's record of human rights abuses. Reagan countered that the military junta “set out to restore order” and that too much was being made over the jailing of “a few innocents.” However, human rights organizations estimate that tens of thousands of people were tortured, killed and disappeared during Argentina's “dirty war.” One of Reagan's first acts as president was to overturn military aid restrictions put in place by Carter as a result of the regime's horrendous human rights record. The administration even hosted Argentine generals “at an elegant state dinner.” Furthermore, Reagan paid members of Argentina's notorious death squads to travel to Honduras to train the Contras, as well as Honduran paramilitaries, such as the infamous death squad Battalion 3-16, as the Baltimore Sun revealed in a 1995 exposé.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3440-elliot-abrams-dark-history-in-latin-america-and-the-struggle-for-justice

[Octafish]

2. Pruneface changed the focus of US foreign policy from pro-human rights to anti-communism.

More money to be made and power to be corrupted.

Thank you for a most important thread, Judi Lynn! The light of truth shining on his works is precisely what the warmongering mass murderer and traitor Elliott Abrams doesn't like.

Public Serpent

Iran-Contra villain Elliott Abrams is back in action.

In These Times
Aug. 6, 2001

EXCERPT...

For those who don't remember, Abrams was one of the most odious participants in a particularly shameful chapter of U.S. history. In the '80s, he was Ronald Reagan's assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs and later the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. In that post, Abrams, in his own words, "supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean."

That policy included backing the contras--a surrogate army dedicated to overthrowing the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It also involved funding the military thugocracy of El Salvador and supervising its war against a popular leftist rebellion. In his role as public servant, Abrams found time to cover up the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan government and embrace the government of Honduras while it perpetrated serial human rights abuses through Battalion 3-16, a U.S.-trained "intelligence unit" turned death squad.

Thick as thieves with Oliver North, Abrams helped evade congressional restrictions on aid to the contras. When Congress--spurred on by protests and embarrassing press disclosures--grew wary of the Central American wars, the Reaganites sought other avenues for funding them. Ever eager to serve, Abrams flew to London under the alias "Mr. Kenilworth" to solicit a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei.

In the congressional investigations that followed disclosure of the Iran-contra conspiracies, Abrams was never held accountable for the human rights violations backed, hidden and funded by the Reagan administration. Instead Abrams was accused of withholding information from Congress, a Washington euphemism for bald-face lying. In 1991, he copped to two counts of withholding information from Congress (and was granted a Christmas Eve pardon a year later by President George Bush).

CONTINUED...