Right-Wing Operation Condor Murderers Should Be in Jail
BY
VITO RUGGIERO
This month, Italian courts jailed fourteen men for their roles in Operation Condor, the US-backed Latin American terror campaign. But many more torturers are living out a peaceful retirement — denying justice to the leftists they brutalized and murdered.
Thousands of Uruguayans take part in the "March of Silence" in memory of those "disappeared" or killed during the Condor period and under the country's military dictatorship on May 20, 2006. (Miguel Rojo/AFP via Getty Images)
For Italians who recall the murderous repression conducted by Latin America’s military juntas, July 9, 2021, is a date bound to remain long in their memory. It marked the conclusion of proceedings that began two decades earlier, when magistrate Giancarlo Capaldo launched investigations into the dozens of Italian citizens who were “disappeared” in the late 1970s and early 1980s in connection with the infamous Operation Condor.
It took fifteen years to conduct the preliminary work for the trial, which ultimately saw twenty-one former military men, ministers, and even statesmen in the dock. One of them resident in Italy’s southern Salerno province was Jorge Néstor Troccoli, a former officer in the Uruguayan Navy’s secret services. He had some years earlier used his Italian citizenship to flee Uruguay in order to evade prosecution in that country over the same charges.
Six years after the proceedings finally got underway in Italy, this month the trial reached its conclusion in the Cassation Court. Fourteen of the defendants, including Troccoli, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Decades since the crimes were committed, some of the twenty-one defendants died before they could be brought to justice. But in Latin America and beyond, many more such criminals remain unpunished.
Condor
To understand the essence of Operation Condor — also known as “plan Condor” or (especially in academic circles) the “Condor system” — we need to take a step back in time to Latin America’s turbulent 1970s. The recent victory of the Cuban Revolution, combined with the independence of many African and Asian countries, had spurred social and political struggles around the continent. This fueled left-wing parties’ and movements’ hopes of meaningful liberation from the model imposed by the United States — a segunda independencia, as the title of a famous song by Inti-Illimani put it.
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/operation-condor-us-intervention-juntas-military-dictatorships-jorge-nestor-troccoli-trial-italy
