Chile 'Caravan of Death' general commits suicide
Source: BBC News
28 September 2013 Last updated at 17:22 ET
Chile 'Caravan of Death' general commits suicide
A former Chilean general and director of intelligence during Augusto Pinochet's rule has killed himself while on weekend release from prison. Odlanier Mena, who was 87 years old, was serving a six-year jail term.
The crimes were allegedly part of the "Caravan of Death" - a military operation thought to have killed more than 100 opponents of the 1973 coup.
On Thursday, President Sebastian Pinera announced plans to close the jail where Mena was being held.
A lawyer representing Mena said his client had been worried about having to be moved from Cordillera to another military facility at Punta Peuco.
Mena is said to have shot himself in the head at home on Saturday. He had been due to return to prison the following day.
At Cordillera, prisoners have access to the internet, cable TV, a tennis court, gardens and a barbecue area.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-24319770
(Also at his luxury prison, 2 prisoners share bungalows, with private bathrooms, a swimming pool, and plans were underway to provide each prisoner with a personal trainer, info. published this week.)
Wolf Frankula
(3,600 posts)while facing a firing squad for his treason.
Wolf
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)September 28, 2013 12:09 updated at 12:15
The latest public statements Odlanier Mena, former CNI
This morning the former director of the CNI Odlanier Mena killed himself while used his prison benefit weekend outings, at his residence in Las Condes. Just the day on which he published a letter in the newspaper El Mercurio.
Coincidentally the day he decided to commit suicide, this Saturday the newspaper El Mercurio published in Letters to the Editor section a letter he wrote the head of the CNI, Odlanier Mena, about a story in which it was awarded participation in Operation Condor, and we show below.
"Last Saturday was published in this journal a note to the effect that I would participate in Operation Condor, with Contreras and Arellano.
I declare under oath that I had no knowledge or participation in such actions ilegles. Moreover, at the end of my command in Rancagua Regiment in Arica in 1974, I was transferred to Santiago to meet me in the Army Intelligence Directorate. I agreed, but on condition of not having any contact with Contreras, who commanded the DINA. As this was not met and, conversely, on September 25 of that year, he set the subordination of all intelligence services that body, I withdrew immediately resigned my position and so unyielding to my institution.
All this appears in my book "Meeting of the truth" ".
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnoticias.terra.cl%2Fnacional%2Flas-ultimas-declaraciones-publicas-de-odlanier-mena-ex-cni%2C020fab47b0561410VgnVCM4000009bcceb0aRCRD.html&act=url
[center]
Odlanier Mena
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As his comments were published in "El Mercurio" it's important to mention that during the run-up to the country's election of the late, murdered President Salvador Allende, (in the Presidential Palace which was being bombed by Air Force planes, and bombarded by soldiers situated on surrounding buildings) Richard M. Nixon's CIA poured millions of U.S. taxpayers' hard-earned dollars into the newspaper, and radio and tv stations, etc. owned by Augustin Edwards, who still lives, and whose son runs the newspaper now. At "El Mercurio" CIA agents in Chile worked getting out the "news" before the election, to handle news about Allende, the leftist, hoping to smear him enough to screw his election, and then, to manage the news after he was elected, to assist the public in forming the image of Allende the US wanted them to carry with them in the lead-up to the coup, so there would be little protest.
This information has been revealed publicly YEARS after it happened, and during the years it was unfolding, the US public was kept completely ignorant, in the dark, and oblivious.
Considering they were doing these things so long ago, it stands to reason that kind of power was simply harnessed, and developed. There's no way it has been put aside, and behind us. It's really time more citizens had the slightest hint of what has happened already in order to grasp more about the present.
[center] Caravan of Death [/center]
Wikipedia:
~ snip ~
The death squad[edit]
The squad was made up of several Army officers. They were led by Army Brigadier General Sergio Arellano, appointed by Augusto Pinochet "Official Delegate of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and President of the Government Junta." Other members included Arellano's second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Sergio Arredondo González, later director of the Infantry School of the Army; Major Pedro Espinoza Bravo, an Army Intelligence officer and later operations chief of the DINA secret police; Captain Marcelo Moren Brito, later commander of Villa Grimaldi, the torture camp; Lieutenant Armando Fernández Larios, later a DINA operative and involved in the assassination of Orlando Letelier (Salvador Allende's former Minister) and others.[2]
The group traveled from prison to prison in a Puma helicopter, inspecting military garrisons and then ordering or carrying out themselves the execution of the detainees. The victims were then buried in unmarked graves. General Joaquin Lagos explained why he didn't return the bodies of the 14 executed prisoners of Antofagasta to their families:
"I was ashamed to see them. They were torn into pieces. So I wanted to put them together, at least leave them in a human form. Yes, their eyes were gouged out with knives, their jaws broken, their legs broken ... At the end they gave them the coup de grace. They were merciless. "[...] "The prisoners were killed so that they would die slowly. In other words, sometimes they were shot them by parts. First, the legs, then the sexual organs, then the heart. In that order the machine guns were fired"[3]
Though the Rettig Commission puts the count of murdered individuals at approximately 3,000 during the 17-year Pinochet ruling, the deaths of these 75 individuals and the Caravan of Death episode itself are highly traumatic, especially as many of the victims had voluntarily turned themselves in to the military authorities, were all in secured military custody and posed no immediate threat because they had no history of violence, nor were threatening to commit any such violence.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravan_of_Death
hatrack
(59,586 posts)Wish I could get all John Donne here, but somehow it's just out of reach.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)Former Chilean Intelligence Chief Commits Suicide, Officials Say
PASCALE BONNEFOY
Published: September 28, 2013
SANTIAGO, Chile A former director of a Pinochet-era intelligence agency killed himself on Saturday, officials said, days after the government announced that it would close the exclusive military prison where he was being held for human rights crimes and transfer the inmates to a less privileged detention center.
The former intelligence chief, Gen. Odlanier Mena, 87, shot himself at home, officials said, where he had been allowed to spend weekends since mid-2011. At that time, he had completed half of a six-year sentence for the 1973 murder of three leftists while he was commander of an army regiment in Arica, in northern Chile. General Mena, who retired from the army, was director of the National Information Center intelligence agency from 1977 to 1980.
The Cordillera Detention Center in eastern Santiago, where General Mena had been serving his sentence, was set up on the grounds of the armys telecommunications command center in 2004. At the time, the Supreme Court was abandoning its practice of applying a 1978 amnesty law in human rights cases, and the government feared that Punta Peuco, a special military prison created in 1995 to hold human rights offenders, would not suffice.
General Menas lawyer, Jorge Balmaceda, blamed the recent government decision for his clients suicide. In the last letter he sent me he expressed concern for the eventual transfer, which would cause him serious moral, physical and psychological harm, Mr. Balmaceda said in an interview with TVN, the Chilean national television station.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/world/americas/former-chilean-intelligence-chief-commits-suicide-officials-say.html?_r=0
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)The US government is still backing armed coups by military men, so I guess we did.
warrant46
(2,205 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)I dont see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
Calculator Alligator
(20 posts)Die bastard.
Aristus
(66,355 posts)And welcome to DU to you, Calculator Alligator!...
Solly Mack
(90,766 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Typical fascist gangster.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)are one of the few countries holding their criminal leaders accountable.
We don't even get an investigation, much less a trial and conviction for our war criminals.
I don't mind shrub and Cheney sharing a bungalow after they are convicted.