RIGHTS-LATIN AMERICA: ‘Operation Condor’ Was No Mystery to Washington

[Joanne98]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot moderator democratic underground)

LIMA, Jan 12 (IPS) - The intelligence services of Peru and Argentina kept Washington informed in real time about a 1980 joint clandestine operation in which four alleged members of Argentina’s Montoneros guerrilla movement were "disappeared," according to documents declassified in the United States.

The incident forms part of the case opened in December by Italian Judge Luisianna Figliola, who issued arrest warrants for those responsible for this and other actions carried out in the framework of Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, torturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Townsend B. Friedman, political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, revealed in a secret Aug. 19, 1980 memo to Claus Ruser, the ambassador’s number two man, details about the operation involving the supposed Montoneros in Lima, and the fatal outcome.

In that memo, which has now been declassified thanks to the efforts of the National Security Archive, an independent Washington-based non-governmental research institute, Friedman told his superior that an Argentine intelligence official had provided them with details of the Lima operation on Jun. 16, 1980.

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