MATHRICH@UMCVMB.BITNET (Rich Winkel UMC Math Department) (02/10/90)
From talk.politics.misc Thu Feb 1 01:24:58 1990
From: harelb@arthur.uchicago.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: E.S. PROJECT -Extensive Excerpts from the report
Date: 31 Jan 90 23:53:51 GMT
For those who wish to participate in the letter-writing campaign, I
have included here extensive excerpts (about twice the material I last
posted) from Amnesty's report "El Salvador: `Death Squads' -- A
Government Strategy". [To obtain your own copy of the full 50 page
report, send $5 to: Amnesty International U.S.A. // National Office //
Publications Department // 322 Eighth Avenue // New York, New York
10001]
For those considering becoming a co-signer of the statement which we
will be sending to all senators on or around Feb. 9 (along with the AI
report and an update from America's Watch re conditions under
Cristiani), I will post the latest draft by Friday or Saturday.
Harel
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PREFACE 1
1 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S LONG-STANDING HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS 3
IN EL SALVADOR
2 AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S CURRENT HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS IN 4
EL SALVADOR
3 REVERSION TO THE "DEATH SQUAD" STRATEGY 7
3.1 Who Runs the "Death Squads"? 8
3.2 How the "Death Squads" Operate 9
3.3 The Legal Framework: A Smokescreen for Official 12
"Death Squad" Activities
4 THE EVIDENCE 15
4.1 Defectors' Testimony 15
4.2 Official statements 18
4.3 The Survivors 19
4.4 Eye-witness Testimony 21
4.5 Equipment and Tactics 24
4.6 The Victims 24
4.6.1 Teachers and academics 25
4.6.2 Trade unionists 26
4.6.3 Members of Cooperatives 30
4.6.4 Displaced people and returned refugees 31
4.6.5 The Judiciary, Human Rights Workers, Journalists 32
5 THE COURTS AND THE MILITARY: OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE 36
INVESTIGATION
5.1 Two Flawed Investigations: The murders of two US 37
Labour Advisers and of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero
6 WHY THE RETURN TO THE "DEATH SQUADS"? 41
CONCLUSIONS 44
RECOMMENDATIONS 46
APPENDIX 49
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From the "Conclusions" section:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(1) "Death squad"-style killings and "disappearances" by the
government's uniformed and plainclothes armed forces are again
increasing... Torture continues, too, often involving mutilation and
often carried out in conjunction with extrajudicial execution.
(2)Tens of thousands of people have been the victims of extrajudicial
execution and "disappearance" by El Salvador's armed forces since
1980... None of the armed forces officers responsible have been
brought to justice, most remain in positions of command.
(4)The Government of El Salvador continues to evade accountability for
"death squad"-style killings an d"disappearances" by its uniformed and
plainclothes military and security services. These openly illegal
actions by the armed forces are routinely attributed to "death
squads", which the government maintains act independently and cannot
be apprehended. Other deliberate killings of prisoners have been
falsely reported by armed forces spokesmen to have been a consequence
of armed clashed with opposition forces.
(5)The testimony of armed forces personnel, the details of thousands
of case studies and other information examined by Amnesty
International lead to the conclusion that actions attributed by
authorities to "death squads" are routinely carried out by regular
units of the armed forces which include the military and the security
services, and by special intelligence units that incorporate civilian
gunmen under their supervision and control. Some individuals publicly
identified as civilian "death squad" personnel have continued to work
openly with armed forces units. They have had effective immunity from
prosecution and have held credentials as armed forces auxiliaries, as
plainclothes agents of the diverse intelligence divisions or members
of the legal, paramilitary civil defense system...
(7)Efforts by El Salvador's independent and church-run human rights
organizations to investigate these killing have been hampered by the
harassment, intimidation, imprisonment, torture, mutilation,
extrajudicial execution and "disappearance" of their members...
(9)The military court system in El Salvador has routinely failed to
prosecute military personnel accused of involvement in torture,
"disappearance" and extrajudicial execution. The exclusive
jurisdiction of the military courts over members of the armed forces
provides a shield behind which armed forces personnel commit grave
crimes with impunity.
(10)In exceptional cases in which military court jurisdiction has been
waived - notably the murder in 1981 of two American labour advisers
and their Salvadorian colleague - civilian courts have been
intimidated and proceeding obstructed by lack of cooperation by the
armed forces.
*******************************************************************
"The use of the "death squad" strategy -murder through domestic
covert action - serves as a short-term solution to both peaceful
dissidence and armed opposition, while allowing government to avoid
accountability for criminal acts" p.8
"Amnesty International has concluded that the Salvadoran
`death squads' are used to shield the government from accountability
for the torture, `disappearance' and extrajudicial executions
committed in their name. The squads are made up of regular army and
police agents, acting in uniform or plain clothes, under the orders of
superior officers." p.9
"In July 1987, fear swept Salvadorian exiles in the US when
several people active in the refugee community reported receiving
death threats. One was Father Luis Olivares of Our Lady Queen of
Angels parish in Los Angeles, a priest active in assisting Central
American refugees, who received a note with the initials "E.M."-
_Escuadron_ _de_ _la_ _Muerte_, "Death Squad -printed on it. A
Salvadorian refugee in Los Angeles reported being raped and tortured
on 6 July by men she believed to have been Salvadorian and another
woman reported threats on her telephone answering machine. The FBI
announced that it would initiate investigations." p.12
"...permitting the use of extrajudicial confessions as a basis
for decreeing provisional detention, as permitted by Decree 618,
virtually ensures that the security forces will attempt to get such a
declaration in almost every case. Such declarations almost invariably
include admissions.. to the all-purpose charge of "subversive
association" Since corroborative evidence is rarely sought, the
admissibility of such statements as "evidence" [and the conditions
under which they may be obtained, particularly incommunicado
detention, and the fact that the two persons required to witness the
declaration may have been the interrogators], provide in Amnesty
International's view the pre-conditions for the use of torture. Any
resulting deaths in unacknowledged custody can then be blamed on
`death squads'" p.12
"Detention techniques and routine procedures used by the
Salvadorian police and military also help obscure `death squad'
action. Hundreds of individual accounts given to Amnesty International
by prisoners eventually freed directly by their plainclothes
abducters, or after having been transferred to the custody of the
uniformed security forces, tell of arrests carried out in a manner
that in legal terms is indistinguishable from kidnapping. Victims have
told of being seized without warrant by heavily armed men in plain
clothes who refused to identify themselves or their agency. Sometimes
captors claimed to represent an `independent death squad' but were
subsequently shown to be member of the security services.
"Detainees were not told where they were detained or where they
were to be taken. One former detainee interviewed by Amnesty
International in a displaces persons camp in March 1987 told how she
had been arrested on 4 January 1985, when a bus in which she was
traveling was stopped by men in four cars with tinted windows.
According to her account, as she was dragged from the bus and forces
into one of the cars, she repeatedly asked who they were but was told
only, `You'll find out'. In the car she was blindfolded and her
interrogation began. She was taken to an isolated spot which appeared
to be a rubbish dump and was told she too was to be dumped there, then
stripped and raped by her interrogators. Later she was taken to
another unidentified place she believed to have been the headquarters
of the National Police, and help incommunicado there for 11 days. She
was then transferred to Ilopango women's prison near San Salvador. It
was only when the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) saw
her there one month after her arrest that her detention became known.
She still does not know which force was responsible for her initial
detention.
"A Salvadorian human rights worker arrested in May 1986 told
Amnesty International of similar treatment. Seized in Mejicanos, San
Salvador by armed men in plain clothes, he was taken blindfolded for
interrogation. When he asked where he was and who was detaining him, he
was simply told, `You will never know.' He later learned that he had
been arrested by the Policia de Hacienda (Treasury Police)
"Such practices are in violation of international
standards..[and] contrast with regulations which the Salvadorian
Defence Ministry [said] are in force...Arrests are to be carried out
by uniformed personnel, except in exceptional circumstances.. even in
[these cases] the Armed Forces procedures manual specifies that they
are to identify themselves...Failure to do so, as seems to be the norm
in El Salvador, enables `disappearances' and killings to be blamed on
`death squads'" p.13
"Several people arrested since the amnesty have reported that
both at the time of their detention by uniformed military personnel
and later, while being interrogated at military barracks, they were
told they were going to be taken to El Playo'n and killed as, the
soldiers said, `there were no longer any political prisoners'. A woman
detained in November 1987 has testified that she was threatened
several times with being taken to El Playo'n, but after a fortuitous
visit by the government Human Rights Commission to the barracks where
she was being held soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion told her that
she had `been lucky', and that if the Commission member hadn't come,
she would have been taken the next day, Sunday, to El Playo'n. She was
released, but shortly afterwards her brother, Jose Angel Alas Gomez
was arrested and tortured by the soldiers of the same Atlacatl
Battalion. He too was released, but seized again shortly afterwards in
a car. The Treasury Police announced that Alas Gomez had died of a
heart attack, but photographs of his body appear to show burns, severe
lacerations to the testicles, severe bruising of the head and face and
bleeding from the mouth and nose. The day after her brother's tortured
body was found, a unit of the Atlacatl Battalion returned to put the
woman's home under surveillance. She now fears for her life." p.42
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"The Salvadorian Government maintains that `death squad'-style
killings are the work of extremist groups beyond its control. However,
there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the squads are made up
of regular troops and police..." ; "Victims are people perceived to be
opponents of the government. They include members of cooperatives,
trade unionists, human rights workers and judges" ; "This report
reviews the evidence...including Salvadorians who have witnessed
`death squad' activities, the rare survivors of `death squad' attacks
and former squad members themselves..." Back cover
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Convictions of five National Guards were eventually obtained
in the case of the four US churchwomen murdered in 1980, but two
judges involved in the early stages of the case quit after threats to
their lives. The judge who eventually heard the case suspected that
his brother's murder was an attempt to warn him off, and the lawyer
defending one of the convicted guardsmen later said he was forced to
take part in a cover-up to prevent senior officers being indicted.
According to the lawyer's account, he was abducted by National
Guardsmen in civilian clothes, tortured at National Guard headquarters
and released only after pressure from the US Embassy and the ICRC. The
lawyer left the country shortly afterwards and was treated in Los
Angeles for broken ribs. Earliers, his brother had been arrested and
brother-in-law abducted - all part, he says, of pressure to ensure his
collaboration in the cover-up." p.32 (in section 4.6.5)
"Amnesty's June 1987 delegation..was told by the few lawyers
who handle political detention or `disappearance' cases that they
receive constant death threats by letter and by telephone in the name
of `death squads', accusing them of being communists. In May 1988
Judge Jorge Alberto Serrano Panamen~o was shot and killed at
point-blank range in front of his home by gunmen in plain clothes.
Two days earlier he had declared inadmissible the request for amnesty
filed by a group of army officers and businessment who face charges of
involvement in a ring kidnapping wealthy Salvadorians for ransom" p.33
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Additional background
Former Ambassador Robert White's Op-ed [New York Times, Nov. 21, 1989]
Death-squad deserter Joya Martinez [In These Times, Nov. 15-21 issue]
See same issue re Cristiani's ARENA party's proposed
"Anti-Terrorist" laws (which have now been passed) which
former President Duarte's Christian Democratic party labeled
"state terrorism"
Treatment of only witness: New York Times, 12/18, by Elaine Sciolino
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