A campaign to terrorize Catholics was orchestrated by the UK military intelligence.
Tag: dirty war
Argentine priest in Dirty War trial
From Al-Jazeera…
A Roman Catholic priest has gone on trial in Argentina charged with involvement in kidnappings, murder and torture while the country was under military rule from 1976 to 1983.
Heavy security surrounded the courthouse in La Plata as the trial got under way on Thursday, with defendant Christian Von Wernich wearing a bullet-proof vest.
The Roman Catholic priest is charged with participating in seven murders, 42 kidnappings, and 31 cases of torture while he was chaplain to the Buenos Aires police force.
He is accused of using his religious position to obtain confessions from prisoners who were held at secret detention centers.
The case has raised questions about the church’s role during Argentina’s so-called Dirty War and although Von Wernich is the first priest to face trial for crimes, about 20 others are alleged to have worked with the military government.
“Von Wernich would visit prisoners after horrific torture sessions and asked them to trust him, to give him information in exchange for an improvement in the conditions of their detention,” Carlos Zaidman, a survivor of one of the detention camps, said.
Dirty War torturer dies
From the BBC:
One of the most notorious figures from the regime of former military ruler of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, has died in prison, officials have said.
Osvaldo Romo, who was serving 15 years in jail for killing three dissidents during Gen Pinochet’s rule, died of heart and respiratory problems.
Known as “El Guaton” (“The Fat One”), Romo also faced pending trials for human rights abuses from 1973 to 1990. …..
A former officer in the feared Dina secret police force, Romo was accused by his victims of being a sadistic torturer.
Boasts
He worked at the notorious Villa Grimaldi detention center in the capital, Santiago, where Chile’s current president, Michelle Bachelet, was briefly held in the 1970s.
Romo once boasted about his actions in a TV interview he gave in prison.
He said he had told the Dina commander, Gen Manuel Contreras, that it was a mistake not to kill some jailed dissidents.
He said that he told Gen Contreras: “Let’s not leave any of these kids alive, my general.”
Romo also infiltrated leftist groups prior to the 1973 military coup in which Gen Pinochet overthrew Marxist President Salvador Allende.
More than 3,000 people were killed or “disappeared” during Gen Pinochet’s 17-year rule.