Chile 'Caravan of Death' general commits suicide
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.
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.)
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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
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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