Through its Intelligence Center (CIE), the Brazilian army would coordinate such directed killings, especially against leftists dissidents and party leaders. The targets would be presented by the member countries and the priority of execution would be decided by a vote. While each country agreed to provide agents (at least four) to the intelligence teams, who would gather information on the targets and locate them, and the operations teams that would execute them.
The document reports that the operations center was in Buenos Aires. As well as co-working with Argentina in Operation Theseus, which was a program to the murder of opponents in Europe. An agreement was signed in 1976 between Argentina and Brazil’s dictatorships to "to hunt down and eliminate” dissidents who tried to flee from one country to the other. Thanks to these efforts the truth has been made public.”Īfter decades of impunity, the families of the victims now have some degree of justice, some sense of closure to one of recent histories darkest and most heinous periods.Declassified documents from the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), opened to the public on April 12, show that Brazil made an aggressive bid to lead Operation Condor in the region but only failed to because of opposition from other countries such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia.ĬIA Declassified Info: Europe Wanted Own 'Operation Condor'Īfter failing to take over the leadership of the regional program, Brazilian security services then decided to remain "on the periphery". “Primarily I’m referring to the Italian Ministry of Justice, the organizations of families of the victims, which made important contributions, and finally by many jurists and researchers. I have to stress how much effort everybody involved put into the case,” said Arturo Salerni, a lawyer who worked on the case and the president of Liberties member CILD. Prosecutors working the case did so under the precedent of “universal justice,” which was established in London in 2000 with the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – a chief mastermind of Operation Condor.Īlthough the crimes took place during the 1970s and 1980s, newly available documents gave Italian prosecutors enough evidence to proceed with charges against the two dozen former high-ranking government officials. Justice at long lastīut the families of the victims never gave up hope that justice would one day be served. Perhaps most chilling are accounts of so-called death flights, when victims were drugged and thrown from airplanes into the ocean, with their stomachs split open to ensure that they either sank or were eaten by sharks.
Thanks to the declassification of documents, we now know that many victims were killed in shocking ways. Hard evidence from government databases confirms that at least 496 political opponents were kidnapped and assassinated during Operation Condor.
#Operation condor trial
They stood trial over the disappearance or death of 43 victims, but the total number of people who were disappeared or murdered during Operation Condor could be as high as 60,000. All but one of the 24 defendants was convicted in absentia, and they include former Peruvian President Francisco Morales Bermúdez and former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Blanco. The trial was the first of its kind in Europe and focused on the deaths of 43 people, including 23 Italian citizens. An Italian court on Monday sentenced 24 people to life in prison for participating in Operation Condor, a campaign of political repression and terror that gripped much of South America between 19.
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