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Found this account from a witness who was in the house when he was taken: 1. In a communication dated June 26, 1981, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights received a denunciation whose pertinent parts state the following:
The Commission is hereby apprised of the present denunciation referring to the violation of the human rights of Professor Tomás Nativí and the engineer Fidel Martínez.
Attached is a sworn statement containing an account of the facts denounced, specifying the place and date of the alleged violations, the names of the victims and the public authorities that have taken note of the act denounced.
The state deemed guilty is the State of Honduras, for commission of violation of the human rights of the victims and for omission in executing petitions.
A writ of habeas corpus has been presented to the Surpeme Court, with the authorities having denied any such arrests.
We have made no denunciation of violation of human rights before any other international governmental organization. I hereby sign this statement addressed to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the OAS, freely and spontaneously, swearing that the data and circumstances contained herein are true, as follows: In company of (...), with whom I was doing some administrative work, there appeared unexpectedly about 10:00 p.m. on June 10, 1981, Professor Tomás Nativí and the Engineer Fidel Martínez; they decided to stay over at the house. We continued our work, finishing it at 12:30 a.m. on June 11, 1981. Both (...) and I retired for the night in the same room and Professor Nativí and Mr. Fidel Martínez each retired to one of the other two bedrooms.
At about 3:00 a.m. three shots fired from a gun equipped with a silencer were clearly heard. Immediately after the first shot there was a cry from the room of Professor Nativí followed by two more shots.
A voice then ordered: "Take care of the other son of a bitch" and someone shouted "Open the door!", "Who is it?"; again the order came "Open up!", to which I replied: "Come in, then, the door's open", and again we heard "Open the door or I'll shoot". At this threat, fearing they would shoot, I got out of bed and opened the door to find six men, five of them wearing hoods. At that same moment Professor Nativí came out of the room across the hall and said "Don't shoot; here I am." All of the men were armed with pistols equipped with silencers. The one without the hood was in charge. The five hooded men wore olive drab jackets with rolled up sleeves and an orange lining like the kind worn by soldiers in the Honduran army. The one in charge ordered two of the hooded men to take Professor Nativí outside the house to where a car with a diesel engine was waiting. It drove off with him. At the same time two of the men pushed me down on the bed and asked me about the door next to the bedroom. I told them it was a bathroom. Trying the door they found it locked. Just seconds before the shots were fired (...) had gotten up to go to the bathroom and, hearing the gunfire had locked the door. They ordered him to come out three times, the last time threatening to shoot, before he opened the door. Menacing him with a gun, they forced him down on the bed next to me and tied our hands behind us with a rope they had brought with them. Two other hooded men in the room of Mr. Martínez said: "We'll have to leave this son of a bitch here; we can't handle him," whereupon the chief ordered the two men who were just coming in to help take out the wounded body of the engineer, who was dragged outside the house wrapped in a sheet and curtains from the room. The same hooded men who had tied up (...) then tied me up too, at the orders of the chief. I could see when they took out the body of the engineer but they ordered me not to look or they'd shoot. They wrapped us up in sheets. I could hear another automobile with an engine that sounded like the first one. They locked us in the bedroom and the same voice ordered "Stay here for half an hour." After some time I was able to untie myself and to free (...) at 3:12 a.m. He left the bedroom at about 4:00 a.m. and went into Mr. Martínez's room to clean it up, ending up with half a bucket of clotted blood. He also found a flat fragment bone, I coudn't stand the sight and had to leave the room. The steady barking of a dog made us afraid that someone was watching the house, so I waited until 5:00 a.m. to call relatives. By this act I consider the right to life, liberty and personal security to have been violated, along with the right to inviolability of the home and to protection from arbitrary arrest. I believe the Honduran State to be guilty of those crimes by possible commission and by omission, since writ of habeas corpus was presented on that same day, Thursday, June 11, by a relative of Professor Nativí. The writ was not executed by the corresponding judge until Tuesday, June 16, before the National Bureau of Investigation (DNI), with negative results. Fear and suspicion kept me inside my own house until the attempt was publicly denounced by the President of the Federation of University students of Honduras (FEUH) at a public meeting in La Merced Plaza. On Saturday, the 13th, three DNI agents came to my house in the morning. I opened the door once they had identified themselves. I believe that the statements I made to the DNI at that time were given when I was in a very highly wrought emotional state. At 4:00 p.m. the same agents returned, accompanied by a photographer who took pictures of the several rooms and other parts of the house. https://www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/86.87eng/Honduras7864.htmI saw one comment which indicated the government claimed Berta should not be paid compensation twice for the same crime. I highly doubt she attempted to "double dip!" ~~~~~~~~~~Berta is mentioned in this article: Landowners, peasants in fight for land - conflict over former military base in Honduras
National Catholic Reporter, Oct 12, 2001 by Paul Jeffrey
12345Next »..Wealthy Hondurans offer bounty for U.S. priest's head
Wealthy landowners on the fertile northern coast of Honduras have taken up a collection to finance the assassination of a U.S. priest who has supported the invasion of farmland by landless peasants and accused the country's wealthiest man of murder, church activists say.
"The head of Fr. Peter Marchetti is now worth 500,000 lempiras (about $32,000 U.S. currency). The killer who manages to assassinate him will get that money," Juan Antonio Mejia, a social worker with the diocese of Trujillo, told NCR.
Marchetti, a 55-year-old Jesuit from Omaha, Neb., was until May the pastor in Tocoa. Nestled in the fertile Aguan Valley in the north of Honduras, the parish has been the scene of violent confrontations between rich and poor people. With encouragement from the church, the poor people in the Aguan Valley took the Jubilee Year seriously, converting the zone into a laboratory for agrarian reform in a region where access to decent farmland remains but a dream for the poor majority.
The most dramatic moment came at midnight on May 14, 2000, when a group of 700 landless families overran government troops to invade a former military base that the U.S. government constructed in the 1980s to train regional armies. The peasants, many of whom lost their simple homes to Hurricane Mitch in 1998, claim the former base should be given to them by the government. While the government's agrarian reform ministry agrees, a group of cattle ranchers that purchased the land in 1991 at a fraction of the land's real value exercises extraordinary economic and political power in the zone. The ranchers met the peasant invaders with gunfire.
Yet by the time the sun came up the next day, the feast day of San Isidro, the patron saint of the peasant, the land was claimed by the peasants. Soon their huts of palm fronds began to resemble homes. They built a school atop cement foundations where U.S. advisers once taught counterinsurgency techniques. They banned alcohol, and organized teams to supervise health, food production, security and education.
Their presence provoked an angry response from the landowners. Tension between the two groups escalated until a gunfight broke out in July, during which Diogenes Osorto, one of the ranchers, died with an AK-47 in his hands. Osorto's family and other ranchers blamed Marchetti, who has provided moral and material support to the peasants.
Marchetti suggests he's a scapegoat. "We've opened up significant space for citizen participation. Without the church I don't think this would have happened," the priest told NCR in a June interview. "Have I spent a lot of time in this personally? No. Do I make the decisions? No. Am I a symbol in a very religious culture that it might be just and godly to distribute resources to the poor? Yes."
The threats haven't dissuaded Marchetti from taking his role seriously. Indeed, he's stepped up the battle, accusing local landowners of profiting from transportation through the region of cocaine bound for the United States.
Marchetti points to one airstrip in particular. It's located on a huge estate near the former military base, owned by Miguel Facusse, the wealthiest man in Honduras. Yet can Marchetti prove that Facusse, the uncle of Honduran President Carlos Flores, is a drug trafficker? "If the cocaine lands on your airstrip all the time, and you have control over your airstrip, then what's going on?" Marchetti asked. "Drugs are good business. It may not be good for the national economy but it's certainly good business for the individuals who transport it."
Marchetti also claims that Facusse was behind the 1997 killing of Carlos Escaleras, a Catholic delegate of the word and a political activist who challenged Facusse's plans to install an African palm oil processing plant on the disputed former military base. Facusse has denied the charges, yet church workers claim that the judge investigating Escaleras' death has received sufficient evidence to indict Facusse and several allies, including two Congress deputies from the zone. Nevertheless, the country's judicial authorities have prevented progress by repeatedly rotating responsibility for the investigation. To date, 10 prosecutors and four judges have been involved in the case. Every time they get ready to move on the evidence, the country's Supreme Court transfers the case to new personnel. "Facusse plays musical chairs with the prosecutors and judges in order to avoid prosecution," Marchetti claimed.
Far from Tocoa
Catholic activists finally convinced the country's attorney general to create a special investigator for the case. But after repeated threats, Luis Canteano, the man given the job, was transferred to Ocotepeque, about as far away as one can get from Tocoa without leaving Honduras.
There's no shortage of witnesses. According to Berta Oliva, coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared, the judge currently assigned the case, Marcos Clara, has four times refused to take a deposition from an unnamed witness who can prove that the money paid to Escaleras' killers came from a chemical plant owned by Facusse. More: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_43_37/ai_79665350/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bush's U.N. Pick Faces Battle Over Contra Role
Critics raise questions about John Negroponte's actions as ambassador to Honduras and his knowledge of a CIA-backed death squad
by Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster
~snip~
Both had given detailed descriptions of their activities as members of 3-16 in attempts to receive political asylum, asserting that they would be killed if they were to return to Honduras now that the political climate has changed. Although Lara and Barrera recanted their claims that they were involved in 3-16 once they returned in Honduras, Discua Elvir defiantly elaborated on his history in the battalion and the U.S. role in it.
Two days after returning home, Discua told the Tegucigalpa newspaper La Prensa that he was brought to the United States for two months in 1983 to organize Battalion 3-16 to work with Contra forces. He has also appeared on television in full uniform with promises of more to tell. Discua is protected by his knowledge of other Honduran leaders' involvement in past crimes, human rights groups say.
"He is sending an explicit message to the United States: If they continue to do damage to him, he will disclose the role of the U.S. in Battalion 3-16 and the situation of that time," said Berta Oliva di Nativi, the director of a group representing the families of "the disappeared." More: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0325-03.htm |
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