WOperation Condor was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents. It was officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America.
WMartín Almada is a lawyer, writer and educationalist from Paraguay. A noted dissident and human rights activist, he was a prisoner of the Alfredo Stroessner regime. He is notable for discovering Archives of Terror.
WThe Batallón de Inteligencia 601 was a special military intelligence service of the Argentine Army whose structure was set up in the late 1970s, active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor, and disbanded in 2000. Its personnel infiltrated and collected information on guerrilla groups and human rights organisations; and coordinated killings, kidnappings and other abuses.
WThe Caravan of Death was a Chilean Army death squad that, following the Chilean coup of 1973, flew by helicopters from south to north of Chile between September 30 and October 22, 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75 individuals held in Army custody in certain garrisons. According to the NGO Memoria y Justicia, the squad killed 97 people: 26 in the South and 71 in the North. Augusto Pinochet was indicted in December 2002 in this case, but he died four years later without having been judged. His trial, however, is ongoing since his and other military personnel and a former military chaplain have also been indicted in this case.
WLilián Celiberti is a Uruguayan feminist activist. She became a political prisoner under the military dictatorship and lived in exile in Italy. She is a founding member and coordinator of the feminist collective Cotidiano Mujer, and she is also a leader in Articulación Feminista Marcosur, which promotes the development of a feminist political platform at the regional and global level.
WColonia Dignidad was an isolated colony of Germans and Chileans established in post-World War II Chile by emigrant Nazi Germans which became notorious for the internment, torture, and murder of dissidents during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s while under the leadership of German fugitive Paul Schäfer. Schäfer was a follower and promoter of the teachings of William Branham.
WThe Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional or DINA was the secret police of Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The DINA has been referred to as Pinochet's Gestapo. Established in November 1973 as a Chilean Army intelligence unit headed by Colonel Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, the DINA was then separated from the army and made an independent administrative unit in June 1974 under the auspices of Decree 521. The DINA existed until 1977, after which it was renamed the Central Nacional de Informaciones or CNI.
WThe ERP-22 de Agosto was an Argentinian guerrilla faction split in 1973 of the Military Committee of the Federal Capital of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), as a result of tactical divergences regarding the organization's position before the electoral act of March 11, 1973.
WFilártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, was a landmark case in United States and international law. It set the precedent for United States federal courts to punish non-American citizens for tortious acts committed outside the United States that were in violation of public international law or any treaties to which the United States is a party. It thus extends the jurisdiction of United States courts to tortious acts committed around the world. The case was decided by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit consisting of judges Wilfred Feinberg, Irving Kaufman, and Amalya Lyle Kearse.
WHuman rights violations in Pinochet's Chile were the crimes against humanity, persecution of opponents, political repression, and state terrorism committed by the Chilean Armed Forces, members of Carabineros de Chile and civil repressive agents members of a secret police, during the military dictatorship of Chile under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.
WHenry Alfred Kissinger is an American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938, he became National Security Advisor in 1969 and U.S. Secretary of State in 1973. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances, with two members of the committee resigning in protest.
WEdward Irving Koch was an American politician, lawyer, political commentator, film critic, and television personality. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and was mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989.
WPeter Kornbluh is the director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project and Cuba Documentation Project.
WBernardo Leighton Guzmán was a Chilean Christian Democratic Party politician and lawyer. He served as minister of state under three presidents over a 36-year career. Exiled as a critic of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, he was targeted for assassination by Operation Condor.
WAnanías Maidana was a teacher and politician in Paraguay. For years he was a political prisoner under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. He later became secretary-general of the Paraguayan Communist Party, and in the 2008 election he was a candidate for the senate for the Socialist Patriotic Alliance, the political coalition in which the PCP participated.
WMontoneros was an Argentine left-wing peronist guerrilla organization, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to the 19th-century cavalry militias called Montoneras, who fought for the Federalist Party during the Argentine Civil Wars.
WAugusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte was a Chilean Army General, politician and military dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being self-declared President of the Republic by the junta in 1974 and becoming the de facto dictator of Chile, and after from 1981 to 1990 as de jure President after a new Constitution, which confirmed him in the office, was approved by a referendum in 1980.
WOtto Juan Reich is an American diplomat and lobbyist who worked in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Reich was born in Cuba; his family moved to North Carolina when he was fifteen. He graduated from University of North Carolina in 1966, and after a brief stint in the US Army, received a master's degree from Georgetown University in 1973. After graduating, Reich worked for the state and federal governments in Florida and Washington, D.C..
WThe Rettig Report, officially The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report, is a 1991 report by a commission designated by then-President Patricio Aylwin detailing human rights abuses resulting in deaths or disappearances that occurred in Chile during the years of military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet, which began on September 11, 1973 and ended on March 11, 1990. The report found that over 2,000 people had been killed for political reasons, and dozens of military personnel have been convicted of human rights abuses. In addition, many reforms have been made based on the recommendations of the report including an official reparations department.
WOsvaldo Romo Mena was an agent of the Chilean Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) from 1973 to 1990, during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Romo was involved in the forced disappearance of over one hundred people, including Christians for Socialism and MIR members Diana Arón Svigilsky, Manuel Cortez Joo and Ofelio Lazo. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but several of the sentences were suspended by the Chilean Supreme Court.
WAlfredo Stroessner Matiauda was a Paraguayan army officer, politician, and dictator who led an authoritarian government in Paraguay from 15 August 1954 to 3 February 1989.
WCyrus Roberts Vance Sr. was an American lawyer and United States Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980. Prior to serving in that position, he was the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Johnson administration. During the Kennedy administration he was Secretary of the Army and General Counsel of the Department of Defense.
WThe Venda Sexy is an estate near Santiago, Chile that was used as a torture center by the DINA secret police during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
WJorge Rafael Videla Redondo was a military officer and dictator, General Commander of the Army, member of the Military Junta, and de facto President of Argentina from March 29, 1976 to March 29, 1981.
WVilla Grimaldi is considered the most important of DINA’s many complexes that were used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners during the governance of Augusto Pinochet. It is located at Avenida José Arrieta 8200 in Peñalolén, on the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978. About 4,500 detainees were brought to Villa Grimaldi during this time, at least 240 of whom "disappeared" or were killed by DINA. It was also the location of the headquarters of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM). The head of Villa Grimaldi during the Pinochet dictatorship, Marcelo Moren Brito, was later convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to more than 300 years in prison.
WThe Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas, is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, renamed in the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act.
WRobert Edward White was an American career diplomat who served as US Ambassador to Paraguay (1977–1980) and to El Salvador (1980–1981). He then became president of the Center for International Policy.