Guatemala: Documents show U.S. officials knew the Guatemalan Army was responsible for 1982 massacre

[Judi Lynn]

Saturday, May 08, 2010
Guatemala: Documents show U.S. officials knew the Guatemalan Army was responsible for 1982 massacre
These materials are reproduced from www.nsarchive.org with the permission of the National Security Archive


Following this week's arrest of a former Guatemalan special forces soldier, the National Security Archive is posting a set of declassified documents on one of Guatemala's most shocking and unresolved human rights crimes, the Dos Erres massacre.
On May 5, 2010, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Gilberto Jordan, 54, in Palm Beach County, Florida, based on a criminal complaint charging Jordan with lying to U.S. authorities about his service in the Guatemalan Army and his role in the 1982 Dos Erres massacre. The complaint alleges that Jordan, a naturalized American citizen, was part of the special counterinsurgency Kaibiles unit that carried out the massacre of hundreds of residents of the Dos Erres village located in the northwest Petén region. Jordan allegedly helped kill unarmed villagers with his own hands, including a baby he allegedly threw into the village well.

The massacre was part of the Guatemalan military's "scorched earth campaign" and was carried out by the Kaibiles ranger unit. The Kaibiles were specially trained soldiers who became notorious for their use of torture and brutal killing tactics. According to witness testimony, and corroborated through U.S. declassified archives, the Kaibiles entered the town of Dos Erres on the morning of December 6, 1982, and separated the men from women and children. They started torturing the men and raping the women and by the afternoon they had killed almost the entire community, including the children. Nearly the entire town was murdered, their bodies thrown into a well and left in nearby fields. The U.S. documents reveal that American officials deliberated over theories of how an entire town could just "disappear," and concluded that the Army was the only force capable of such an organized atrocity. More than 250 people are believed to have died in the massacre.

The Global Post news organization conducted an investigative report into the investigation of the Guatemalan soldiers living in the United States and cited declassified documents released to the National Security Archive's Guatemala Documentation Project under the Freedom of Information Act. These documents are part of a collection of files assembled by the Archive and turned over to Guatemala's truth commission investigators, who used the files in the writing of their ground-breaking report, "Guatemala: Memory of Silence."

The documents include U.S. Embassy cables that describe first-hand accounts by U.S. officials who traveled to the area of Dos Erres and witnessed the devastation left behind by the Kaibiles. Based on their observations and information obtained from sources during their trip, the American officials concluded "that the party most likely responsible for this incident is the Guatemalan Army."

More:
http://ionglobaltrends.blogspot.com/2010/05/guatemala-documents-show-us-officials.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FzqKG+%28i+On+Global+Trends%29

[formercia]

1. So much for cheap bananas.

Think of this, next time you're in the Supermarket.

[EFerrari]

2. The was during Deathsquads Negroponte's tenure in Honduras.

Wouldn't it be something if one of these investigations south of our border finally outed this monster?

[abq e streeter]

3. Sad to say, even if it were proven his fingerprints were all over this

few people here would ever find out about it. The MSM, as you and I both know, wouldn't find time to slip that little tidbit of information in amidst its more important news such as missing perky young white women or all the other bullshit they feed us. I mean, this SOB's name and his vile deeds are well known already to informed people like you, Judi Lynn and myself and many other informed progressives. I bet maybe one in a hundred Americans have ever even heard of him. And half of those probably know only that he's a diplomat or something. He'll never pay a price of any kind for the evil he's helped inflict on the world . I hope to god that I'm wrong about that. I hate being the perpetual pessimist, ( and bringing this negativity to my posts on DU) but the track record of making any people like this pay for their crimes is a pretty poor one, and the Obama administration has so far proven to have little or no inclination to bring people like this to justice.

[EFerrari]

4. I feel the same way about the negativity I post here, too. n/t

[yowzayowzayowza]

5. "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z02J_kPincA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Had_a_Rocket_Launcher

[bemildred]

6. We taught them everything we knew about it.

And they were good students.