Latin America: The Return of the Condor Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina - Direct from Cuba LATIN AMERICA: THE RETURN OF THE CONDOR by Stella Calloni, Prensa Latina [The author is an Argentinean journalist, international analyst and a Prensa Latina collaborator.] Buenos Aires--Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles' recent detention in Panama, for leading a commando group that brought explosive devices into that country to attempt to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro during the 10th Ibero-American Summit is daily acquiring greater importance. In the many recent trials against dictatorships of the South, these same people appear to be accomplices in the so-called Operation Condor. This was an operation carried out by the military governments of the '70s, at the service of the US, to kill, kidnap, torture, and exchange prisoners and data on opposition groups, as many documents reveal. The Cuban president left a great impact on the world when he publicly denounced -- with evidence -- the criminal plan. Arms and equipment were found in Panama, including the C4, a powerful military explosive. The list handed over by Cuban security to its Panamanian colleagues comprised not only Posada Carriles but also Guillermo Novo Sampoll, Pedro Remon Rodriguez and Manuel Dias, whose real name is Gaspar Eugenio Jimenez. These names are part of the history of the Operation Condor and the crimes by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with which all of them collaborated. Posadas Carriles and Cuban-American Orlando Bosch, who has a long history of leading terrorist actions against his country, were found responsible for the 1976 explosion of a Cubana Airline plane with 73 people on board, in Barbados. Posadas Carriles, who had been arrested in Venezuela where he planned the Barbados' attempt, fled with the complicity of Venezuelan political police (DISIP) members, who also collaborated with Operation Condor, as proven by "terror archives" found in Asuncion, Paraguay in 1992. The terrorist, protected by the CIA, was then relocated in El Salvador, collaborating with this country's criminal army and the Nicaraguan "Contras", leader of the dirty war against Nicaragua at the end of 1970's and during 1980. It was this period when crimes against humanity were committed throughout the zone. Gaspar Eugenio Martinez's also has a considerable history. In 1975, he attempted to assassinate Cuban Ambassador to Argentina, Emilio Aragones, and participated in another series of crimes, also related to the Condor. To carry out the Barbados attempt, Posada Carriles and Bosch hired Venezuelan photographer Hernan Ricardo and his friend Fredy Lugo, who were paid to put the bomb in the plane transporting young Cuban athletes who had successfully participated in the Central American Games and were returning to Havana. The tragedy occurred on October 6, 1976, only a few days after the murders of former Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister Orlando Letelier and his US secretary Ronny Moffit in Washington, where he was in exile with his family from General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. It is precisely in Panama where other determining criminal names were found, such as Guillermo Novo Sampoll who, together with his brother Ignacio placed the bomb beneath Letelir's car, on the night of September 20, 1976, a day before it exploded. This proves the common link between these two crimes and others carried out in those years in the region and even in Europe, included in the coordinated operations of the US National Security Doctrine, applied all over the world and causing genocide in Latin America. On September 21, 1976, the car in which Letelier, his secretary Ronny, and her husband Michael Moffit were traveling exploded in Sheridan Circle, on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, DC. Only Michael survived. The remote control bomb was activated by Cuban-American terrorist Jose Dionisio Suarez at 09:30 local time, as revealed during the 1978 trial, two years later. The Novo Sampoll brothers' full participation was also proven at the time. They were all members of late Jorge Mas Canosa's Cuban-American Foundation, current promoter of strategic actions in our countries. Letelier's crime was directed by CIA agent Michael Townley, now a "protected witness" (or rather "protector witness") in the US, together with the National Investigations Administration (DINA), the political police of Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet. Others were also involved, such as Alfredo Stroessner's Paraguayan dictatorship. During the recent November 20 trial for the murders of General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofia on September 30, 1974 in Argentina, DINA was considered an illicit association. The crime is the reason for the request for extradition request of Pinochet, former DINA chief General Manuel Contreras, and General Raul Iturriaga, among others. Contreras himself publicly accused former President George Bush for the Operation Condor crimes, and confirmed the Miami Cuban groups' complicity and support for Prats' crimes. The Cuban American Foundation not only collected money to defend Jose Dionisio Suarez -Letelier's direct killer- but also hired the Novo brothers again when they were released from prison where were punished for the murder. These figures' history is long and frightening. The US journalists John Dinges and Saul Landau, who wrote the book "Murder in the Embassies' Neighborhood", discovered that Guillermo Novo had shot at the United Nations building in New York with a bazooka in 1964, among other actions of this kind. Under the protection of Bush and his sons George and Jeb, as well as of the US ultra-rightwing sectors, these groups came back to their old tricks in the region as businessmen or security agents of those business when "wild globalization" hit our region like a hurricane. If Letelier's murder is a key element in the evil alliance between the US ultra-rightwing and Miami-based Cuban American terrorist groups, so is the trial held in Italy to judge the assault against Chilean Christian Democrat leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife Anita, both exiled in Rome during Pinochet's dictatorship. On October 16th 1975, a paid killer shot the couple as they returned to their home in Rome, near the Vatican city. Badly wounded, they survived but with severe side effects. AT the end of 1975, with much evidence, the "Zero" group from the "Cuban Nationalist Movement" was judged as having attempted to take Leighton's life, accusing him of being a Marxist. This group later formed the Unified Revolutionary Organization Command (CORU) presided over by Bosch. In the trial of Leighton's case which took place in Rome, it was clear that the Italian neo-fascist paramilitary organization Avanguardia Nazionale, headed by Stefano Delle Chiaie, as well as the Miami-based anti-Cuban groups and the Chilean DINA, backed the action. When Letelier's murder and the Cubana airplane bombing in Barbados were committed, Bush was CIA chief. Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia of Excelsior daily, killed in 1984 when he was investigating CIA activities in his country, recalled that "even though Bush was in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency for a very short time (from January 30, 1976 to January 20, 1977), it was enough to order and support some of the CIA's most notorious assassinations committed in Mexico and other countries". In his book "The CIA in Mexico" (pages 42, 43 and 44) referring to these violent events, Buendia states that in February 1975, Bush recruited mercenaries to fight in Angola under the National Front of Liberation against the leftwing Popular Liberation Movement in that country, to which the CIA granted US$ 20 million. "Mr. Bush will have plenty of time to remember what the fortune-seeking soldiers, recruited by him or his subordinates, did in Angola", the Mexican journalist wrote. "In April 1976, he ordered his agent (Lawrence) Sternfield to organize a meeting to unite the groups of Cuban exiles who were in disposed to combat against their country. Under the CIA direction in San Jose, Costa Rica, the CORU was created. Its General Coordinator Orlando Bosch was detained after the civil airplane bombing in Barbados. On July 23rd 1976 a CORU command formed by Orestes Ruiz and Gaspar Eugenio Jimenez attempted to kidnap the Cuban consul in Merida. Though the operation failed, a collaborator of the consulate (Artagnan Biass) was murdered. Due to an alert, the Mexican police also impeded the attempt to bomb the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, Buendia denounced. It is not an accident that among the people detained in Panama are persons like Jimenez (under the false name of Manuel Diaz), together with Posada Carriles. Aside from his operations in Mexico where he was arrested and later escaped, this person has a long criminal record also linked with Operation Condor, namely the already mentioned terrorist 1975 attack against the Cuban Ambassador in Argentina. In the same year, he was among those who planned to assassinate Fidel Castro during his visit to Jamaica. In 1977, Jimenez was detained by the US authorities under the charges of violating the US Neutrality Law for his participation in terrorist actions against Cuba. Shortly afterwards, he was released because of the influences of his powerful friends. Now he is accused by the Cuban authorities of attempting to murder Fidel Castro at the first Ibero American Summit in Mexico in 1991, and then in 1992 and 1993 when Fidel Castro participated in the former Honduran President Carlos Roberto Reina's swearing in ceremony. They were also with Posada Carriles in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia during another Summit, proving that they had also planned many other criminal actions. They traveled to several countries where those meetings were taking place, displaying terrorist operations that, had they been successful, would have had terrible consequences. Many of these plans were discovered in time. These facts determine the return or continuity of the Condor Plan -- which cannot be stopped as long as the masterminds of this criminal organization remain unpunished in the United States and, what is worse, are a Mafioso power within the world's biggest empire. GRS/DIG/RA (c) 2001 Prensa Latina, NY Transfer News. 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