Italy Follows Trail of Secret South American Abductions

[Joanne98]

February 22, 2008

Italy Follows Trail of Secret South American Abductions

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BUENOS AIRES — In an unusually sweeping investigation, Italian authorities are seeking to prosecute former top officials in seven South American countries for their roles in a secret operation in the 1970s and 1980s by the region’s security forces to crush left-wing political dissent.

The extraordinary breadth of the seven-year Italian investigation, into what is known as Operation Condor, has drawn in countries formerly not thought to have been deeply involved in the shadowy program, particularly Peru. It has also agitated political establishments up and down the continent.

The investigation and recently declassified documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times, suggest a complicit role of the United States in Condor’s often-deadly operations, some of which American officials knew about before but did little to stop.

In late December, Judge Luisianna Figliolia in Rome issued arrest warrants for 140 former officials from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, seeking to prosecute them in connection with the disappearance of 25 Italian citizens.

The Condor countries helped one another locate, transport, torture and ultimately make disappear dissidents across their borders, and even collaborated on assassination operations in Europe and the United States.

In an operation that historians call reminiscent of the United States’ modern terrorist rendition program, the Condor countries sometimes used an allied intelligence network to track and transport terrorism suspects to a third country for interrogations.

“This is the most ambitious look yet at Operation Condor,” said Reed Brody, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch in Brussels. “I don’t know of any other case that has taken on so much.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/world/americas/22condor.html?_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin