Latin America
Related: About this forumExposed: FBI Surveillance of School of the Americas Watch
Exposed: FBI Surveillance of School of the Americas Watch
Written by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
Tuesday, 17 November 2015 19:57
Source: SOA Watch
For a decade, the FBI, flagrantly abused its counter-terrorism authority to conduct a widespread surveillance and monitoring operation of School of Americas Watch (SOAW), a nonviolent activist organization founded by pacifists with the aim of closing the U.S. Armys School of the Americas (now renamed) and ending the U.S. role in the militarization of Latin America.
Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, on behalf of SOAW, once again reveal the FBIs functioning as a political surveillance and intelligence operation and its use of its domestic terrorism authority against peaceful protest in the United States.
SOAW organizes annual protests in Fort Benning, Ga., the site where the U.S. Army has trained many of the military leaders and dictators in Latin America who were responsible for massacres of opposition forces and the creation of torture centers, among other crimes against humanity. The training at the SOA is ongoing and the graduates of the institute continue to engage in extrajudicial executions and the repression of social movements in countries like Chile, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico.
SOAWs mission and proven track record are peaceful. Yet the FBI deployed its domestic terrorism resources, reported to the Counterterrorism Unit and reached out to the Miami Domestic Intelligence Terrorism Squad. It used confidential informants inside the movement to collect information. The FBIs headquarters and counter-terrorism units were requested to provide the FBIs Field Office in Atlanta with all intelligence relevant to the SOA, so that this information can be provided to local/military law enforcement agencies.
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/5521-exposed-fbi-surveillance-of-school-of-the-americas-watch
Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016138910
Mopar151
(9,983 posts)that was like, 6 names ago - likely why the article doesn't list the current name.
My old friend Wacky Willy the welder had seen 1000+ fly- by - night outfits - He'd call this one "The Chameleon Torture Academy".
Judi Lynn
(160,542 posts)The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation was chosen because it had been so easy for people around the world to refer to S.O.A. as "School of Assassins."
They went out of their way to try to pick a name which couldn't be used to remind people what it is they do. Apparently they took it as an insult that everyone was fully aware that they teach torture at S.O.A. As everyone knows who they are, have always been, most people still tend to refer to them as S.O.A., regardless of their attempt to dodge recognition after people know what they've been doing all these long, brutal years against the people of the Americas.