Chile confirms sentence against ex-Nazi soldier (And one of Pinochet's head torturers)

[ck4829]

The Chilean Supreme Court has confirmed a sentence of three years and one day for Paul Schaefer, a former Nazi corporal and founder of a mysterious German enclave in Chile, for torturing settlers.

According to court documents, Schaefer, 84, ordered that psychotropic medication be administered and electric shocks be applied to eight members of the enclave in order to prevent them between 1980 and 1990 from speaking out about the Colonia Dignidad enclave.

The Second Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed the sentence that came from a divided ruling in 2008 overseen by Judge Jorge Zepeda, who has investigated alleged crimes committed at the enclave.

Schaefer faces four other sentences he is serving since being sent to a Chilean prison after his capture in Argentina in March 2005.

He has namely been sentenced to 20 years for sexually abusing more than 20 children at the enclave, located in a moutainous area in southern Chile.

The other sentences include three years and one day for the murder of a former agent who served under Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 regime.

http://www.ejpress.org/article/36536

These people who do torture are such delightful people, you've got to wonder about some of the torturers here in the United States, about what they do in their spare time...

[Octafish]

1. Very important case, demonstrating link between international right and NAZIs.

Pinochet was supported by the United States, big time. Poppy's CIA gave the guy the point on Operation CONDOR, the international Murder Inc charged with looking up and eliminating leftists throughout the hemisphere. Even Washington DC.

Pinochet's support for Herr "Doktor" Schaeffer and Colonia Dignidad was a sign of things to come. Many, if not all, of Bush's policies have their ideological and methodological roots in the Third Reich, including torture and killing of children.

What's telling for us how much Corporate McPravda has played up the Manchurian Candidate angle on the Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo etc reportage. "Blame the Communists" is as old as the Reichstagfeuer.

[Octafish]

2. Wake up, DU! This NAZI stuff is all around.

Poppy's CIA at work:

OPERATION CONDOR DOCUMENTS INDICATE 1976 TERRORIST ATTACK IN WASHINGTON MIGHT HAVE BEEN PREVENTED

They LUV Nazis because Nazis protect the wealthy.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Background on Pinochet's accomplice, Nazi Paul Schaeffer:

Last Updated: Friday, 11 March, 2005, 20:16 GMT
Secrets of ex-Nazi's Chilean fiefdom
By Becky Branford
BBC News

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/40917000/jpg/_40917167_schaeferold_b203_afp.jpg

~snip~
Paul Schaefer was a medic in Hitler's army during World War II. After the war, he set up an evangelical ministry and a youth home, purportedly to care for war orphans.

But he was charged with sexually abusing two boys - and in 1961 he fled to Chile, reportedly accompanied by some 70 followers.

There, in a lush valley in the Andean foothills, he set up Colonia Dignidad - now renamed Villa Baviera.

~snip~
Former political prisoners of Gen Pinochet have testified to a warren of stone-walled tunnels under the colony, where they were taken to be tortured with electric shocks to the strains of Wagner and Mozart.

The Truth and Justice Commission, which investigated human rights abuses during Gen Pinochet's rule, backs such allegations.

And despite decades of allegations concerning the sexual abuse of boys within the compound, charges were not filed against Schaefer until 1996 - six years after Chile began its return to democracy.

Thanks to Mr Schaefer's close links with Chile's ruling elite, the colony was able to operate with impunity as a "state within a state", said a Chilean congressional report.

Critics say elements within Chile's ruling establishment would still prefer to keep details of his involvement with Gen Pinochet's government concealed.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4340591.stm

http://hugoorell.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2008/03/noticia_3049_normal.jpg

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/40920000/jpg/_40920217_ap_colonia203.jpg http://www.memoriaviva.com.nyud.net:8090/centros/07Region/VII_Region_Colonia_dignidad_Foto_aerea.jpg

Last Updated: Tuesday, 22 March, 2005, 01:16 GMT
New charges for Chile cult head

Former Nazi and cult leader Paul Schaefer has been charged with the 1976 disappearance of an opponent of former Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet.
Photographer and left-wing activist Juan Maino was arrested and taken to Mr Schaefer's secret commune, Colonia Dignidad, and never re-appeared.

~snip~
He is also wanted for questioning in Germany on suspicion of the abuse and corruption of minors, and is under investigation in France.

In addition, he is wanted for questioning about the disappearance in 1985 of Boris Weisfeiler, an American-Jewish mathematics professor of Russian origin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4370607.stm

The Torture Colony

In a remote part of Chile,
an evil German evangelist built
a utopia whose members helped
the Pinochet regime perform
its foulest deeds

By Bruce Falconer

~snip~
All this was made possible by one man, a charismatic, Evangelical preacher named Paul Schaefer, who founded the community and who, until several years ago, remained very much in charge. Tall, lean, and of strong build, with thin gray hair and a glass eye, Schaefer lived most of his adult life in Chile but possessed only a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish; like his followers, he spoke primarily in German. Although the colonos of Colonia Dignidad dressed in traditional German peasant clothes—the men in wool pants and suspenders, the women in homemade dresses and headscarves—Schaefer wore newer, more modern clothes that denoted his stature. His manner was serious; he seldom smiled. The effect only deepened the sense of mystery that surrounded him.

Few outsiders ever gained access to the Colonia while its reclusive leader remained in power. An old Chilean newsreel, however, filmed at Schaefer’s invitation in 1981, provides a rare picture of life inside the community, a utopia in full and happy bloom. The footage shows a bucolic paradise of sunshine and verdant fields set among clean, fast-flowing rivers and snowy peaks. Its German inhabitants improve the land and work their trades. A carpenter assembles a new chair for the Colonia’s school. A woman in a white apron bakes German-style torts and pastries in the kitchen. Teenaged boys clear a new field for planting. Children laugh and splash in a lake. Schaefer himself, wearing a white suit and brown aviator sunglasses, takes the camera crew on a tour. Standing next to the Colonia’s flour mill, he extols the quality of German machinery. “We bought this mill in Europe,” he says in broken Spanish. “It is 60 years old, but we have not had to do any repairs on it.” Even today, this remains one of the only known recordings of his voice. It is crisp and baritone. Back outside, Schaefer leads the television crew to a petting zoo, where the reporter feeds chunks of bread to baby deer and plays with the colonos’ collection of pet owls. The newsreel concludes with a performance by a 15-piece chamber orchestra composed of young, female colonos in flowing white skirts and colorful blouses. The music is beautiful and expertly played.

These images were a reflection of Colonia Dignidad as Schaefer wanted it to be seen. Today, a quarter century later, with Schaefer gone and his utopia open to visitors for the first time, it looks much the same. On a recent trip to Chile, I made the four-hour drive south from Santiago. The village remains an oasis of German tidiness, with blooming flower gardens and perfectly tended copses of willows and pines. As I walked through it, there were very few people on the streets, and those I encountered smiled politely, then quickly retreated indoors. They did not invite conversation. I was reminded of what a Chilean friend, a journalist, had told me as I prepared for my visit. “You will get the uneasy feeling of crossing into some sort of twilight zone,” he had said. “You will see the way they dress, their haircuts. It’s like going back in time to Germany in the 1940s. Even though it is easier to talk to the colonos than it was a few years ago, things are still a long way from being ‘normal.’ Most of them are still quite afraid of speaking openly.”

The truth, so unlikely in this setting, is that Colonia Dignidad was founded on fear, and it is fear that still binds it together. Investigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. Orchestrated by Paul Schaefer and his inner circle of trusted lieutenants, much of the abuse was initially directed inward as a means of conditioning the colonos to obey Schaefer’s commands. Later, after General Augusto Pinochet’s military junta seized power in Chile, the violence spilled onto the national stage. Schaefer, through an informal alliance with the Pinochet regime, allowed Colonia Dignidad to serve as a torture and execution center for the disposal of enemies of the state. The investigations continue. In the months preceding my visit, police found two large caches of military-grade weapons buried inside the compound. Parts of cars had also been unearthed, their vehicle identification numbers traced back to missing political dissidents. Even as I stood in Schaefer’s house drinking apple juice, elsewhere on the property a police forensics unit was excavating a mass grave thought to contain the decomposed remains of dozens of political prisoners.

More:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-torture-colony/

[Octafish]

4. Operation CONDOR brought TERROR to three continents.

Of course, to Kissinger and Poppy Bush and the rest of that fascist crowd, it's not terror when our terrorists do the killing mor are they drug dealers. To them, these are "allies" and "businessmen."

Operation Condor

Desription

Operation Condor was a 1970s terrorist conspiracy by six U.S.-supported Latin American governments -- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay -- to murder their political opponents around the world. Known as Operation Condor, "foreign armies and security services cooperated in dealing with political opponents from one country who crossed into another, and assigned their own men to out-of-country operations to avoid the identification of local agents." Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

According to once secret documents published by the daily La Nacion, Operation Condor was formally established by an act of the I Interamerican Reunion on Military Intelligence, that took place in Chile on November 25, 1975, attended by delegates of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The act became part of the bais for the genocide, torture and terrorism accusations of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon against Augusto Pinochet, leading to the general's detention on October 16, 1998. "The coordination among the secret services of Chile, Argentina, Brasil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay meant the death of 200 Chileans detained in the neighboring countries and of thousands throughout Latin America, according to the data discovered by Paraguay in the files that came to be known as the Archives of Terror...According to the information established to date, Operation Condor was created by the DINA, secret police agency of the chilean military regime, thus proving, as stated by human rights organizations, the direct responsibility of general Augusto Pinochet. This coordination of police services had its debut during the so called Colombo Operation in 1974, which was launched to cover up for the murder of 119 opponents in Chile: their corpses were made to appear in Argentina and their deaths were attributed to a supposed confrontation between factions." "Official secret documents from Chile prove the existence of Operation Condor." El Pais, Jueves 17 junio 1999 - N: 1140. Translated by Maria Elena Hope for Nuevo Amanecer Press, General Director, Roger Maldonado

American Involvement

Creation of Operation Condor

Col. Manuel Contreras, who organized the terror network, had set up the Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), the Chilean secret police, two months after the September 1973 coup. CIA station chief Stuart Burton, who arrived in Santiago in May 1974, established a close liaison with Contreras and DINA. U.S. Embassy political officer John Tipton, who at the time was cabling protests of human-rights abuses and coauthoring a dissent channel memorandum that called for more U.S. attention to the issue, told me the CIA and DINA were working together. He said, "I don't believe the CIA set up DINA, but they were in a close relationship. Burton and Contreras used to go on Sunday picnics together with their families. That permeated the whole CIA station."
In August 1975, Contreras had met in Washington with CIA deputy director Vernon A. Walters. Up until then, cooperation between the security services of the Latin American dictators had been informal. There are no declassified documents that prove Walters urged or approved the plan to set up Operation Condor, but the month after meeting with Walters, Contreras asked Pinochet, in a memo obtained by Italian courts, for another $600,000 for "reasons that I consider indispensable," one of which was "the neutralization of the government junta's principal adversaries abroad, especially in Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, the U.S.A. and Italy."
After Contreras' meeting with the military intelligence chiefs of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay in October, the relationship was formalized and a joint information center was established at DINA headquarters.
In March 1976, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), and several other members of Congress visited Chile and met with human-rights defenders there. Miller has now called on President Bill Clinton to release "critical information that will help link Pinochet directly to acts of international terrorism."
Source: Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

Department of Defense, Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) Expands Operations and Facilities, April 15, 1975: This heavily excised Intelligence Report from the Defense Attache in Santiago Chile, describes the growth of DINA, the national intelligence arm of the Chilean government and "the sole responsible agency for internal subversive matters." Many of the excised portions provide details about the strained relations between DINA and the Chilean Armed Forces because of DINA's exclusive power. The report states that the head of DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras, "has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from, President Pinochet." Source: Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, CHILE: DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON PINOCHET AND THE 1973 COUP

1973: U. S. Embassy Participation in Operation Condor

The Chilean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission says U.S. Embassy personnel were involved in the capture of a Chilean by Paraguayan police. In the 1991 report, it said that Chilean Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcon was arrested by the Paraguayan police crossing the border to Argentina in May 1975, and that the participants in his capture were "the Argentine intelligence services, who provided the information about his false passport; persons from the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, who informed the Chilean Investigative Police of the result of the interrogations, and the Paraguayan police, who permitted the clandestine transport of the detainee." ... Fuentes Alarcon was brought to a Chilean torture center, Villa Grimaldi, in Santiago. He never left. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

1976: The FBI Learns of Operation Condor

A week after the killings of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S., and his Instiute for Policy Studies colleague Ronni Moffitt in Washington in 1976, Robert Scherrer, the FBI's attache in Buenos Aires assigned to the case, reported key information to Washington. Scherrer had learned from an Argentine official that Chile was the center of something called Operation Condor, established to share intelligence and engage in joint operations against "so-called 'leftists,' communists and Marxists," he wrote in a recently release document. He said the operation included setting up teams to carry out assassinations around the world and speculated it might have orchestrated the Washington bombing. Scherrer learned that the CIA had already reported on Operation Condor. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

FBI, Operation Condor Cable, September 28, 1976: This cable, written by the FBI's attache in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, summarizes intelligence information provided by a "confidential source abroad" about Operation Condor, a South American joint intelligence operation designed to "eliminate Marxist terrorist activities in the area." The cable reports that Chile is the center of Operation Condor, and provides information about "special teams" which travel "anywhere in the world... to carry out sanctions up to assassination against terrorists or supporters of terrorist organizations." Several sections relating to these special teams have been excised. The cable suggests that the assassination of the Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, may have been carried out as an action of Operation Condor. Source: Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, CHILE: DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON PINOCHET AND THE 1973 COUP

1993: Paraguayan archives of terror reveal Nazi and drug trafficking connection with Operation Condor

A Paraguayan, Federico Tatter, who had fled to Argentina in 1963 out of opposition to the Gen. Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship, was kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1976. Years later, his widow got photographs from Paraguayan human-rights groups that showed her husband in the company of Paraguayan police. The photos were in records opened in 1993, after an ex-political prisoner, acting on a tip, took a judge to a police station to get his own files. They discovered a huge cache of documents, now known as the "archives of terror." ... The papers revealed that the terror network murdered a former president of Brazil and two Uruguayan parliamentarians, as well as hundreds of political activists. They also documented the presence of Nazis throughout the southern cone and the assassination of Israeli agents who were pursuing them. Finally, they detailed the connection of local intelligence services with drug traffickers and with the CIA.... Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, correspondent for the Mexican daily La Jornada in Mexico, reported that after the U.S. Agency for International Development arrived to help microfilm the Paraguayan files, some of which detailed U.S. connections with the Paraguayan police, journalists who sought to look at the archives discovered that the military-related material about Operation Condor had been put out of their reach. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

CONTINUED...

http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/condor.htm

This would be "old news" if there were Justice in the United States. Instead, it's a warning to where we are and where we are heading.