The Condor Years by John Dinges Read Free Book Online Page A

of Argentina to coordinate and multiply the scope of the identical crimes of terrorism, assassinations, illegal arrests, torture, kidnapping of minors and disappearances. . . . The criminal conspiracy followeda common pattern, with those charged herein using public functionaries under their command to commit their crimes . . . and financing their terrorist activities with the National Budget, and whose victims include Spaniards and also tens of thousands of citizens of other countries, who were assassinated, kidnapped or “detained and disappeared” in actions committed in many states of America and Europe. The conspiracy . . .received the name Operation Condor.
    As evidence, Garcés cited the only authoritative document known at the time, an FBI cable published in the author’s 1980 book on the Letelier assassination.
    The cable was an intelligence report written a week after that assassination by the FBI man in Argentina, Robert Scherrer:
    “OPERATION CONDOR” IS THE CODE NAME FOR THE COLLECTION, EXCHANGE AND STORAGE OF INTELLIGENCE DATA CONCERNING SO CALLED “LEFTISTS,” COMMUNISTS AND MARXISTS, WHICH WAS RECENTLY ESTABLISHED BETWEEN COOPERATING INTELLIGENCE SERVICES IN SOUTH AMERICA IN ORDER TO ELIMINATE MARXIST TERRORIST ACTIVITIES IN THE AREA. IN ADDITION, OPERATION CONDOR PROVIDES FOR JOINT OPERATIONS AGAINST TERRORIST TARGETS IN MEMBER COUNTRIES OF “OPERATION CONDOR.” CHILE IS THE CENTER FOR “OPERATION CONDOR” AND IN ADDITION TO CHILE ITS MEMBERS INCLUDE ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA, PARAGUAY AND URUGUAY. BRAZIL ALSO HAS TENTATIVELY AGREED TO SUPPLY INTELLIGENCE INPUT FOR “OPERATION CONDOR.” MEMBERS OF “OPERATION CONDOR” SHOWING THE MOST ENTHUSIASM TO DATE HAVE BEEN ARGENTINA, URUGUAY AND CHILE. A THIRD AND MOST SECRET PHASE OF “OPERATION CONDOR”INVOLVES THE FORMATION OF SPECIAL TEAMS FROM MEMBER COUNTRIES WHO ARE TO TRAVEL ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD TO NON-MEMBER COUNTRIES TO CARRY OUT SANCTIONS UP TO ASSASSINATION AGAINST TERRORISTS OR SUPPORTERS OF TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS FROM “OPERATION CONDOR” MEMBER COUNTRIES.
    Both court filings made the impunity argument: In Chile there had been “not even a single judicial investigation” against the military leaders despitemany futile attempts by victims families to bring such charges in Chile’s courts. To the contrary, the military leaders had decreed a “self-amnesty” in 1978 to prevent such court actions. By the end of July 1996, Court numbers 5 and 6 of the Spanish National Court ( Audiencia Nacional ) had ratified the legitimacy of the criminal cases, allowing the investigating judges to examine evidence for formal indictments of the accused Chilean and Argentine officers.
    The aggressive judicial actions were unprecedented. Neither the crimes, nor the alleged criminals, nor the victims were in the territory of Spain at the time of the events. Yet, once the specific legalities were cleared away, the courts’ decisions in accepting the cases were based on a fairly simple principle of international law: that truly egregious crimes, those that rise to the level of crimes against humanity such as those forever engraved in human consciousness by the Nazi atrocities of World War II, are matters of universal jurisdiction. In other words, if the state in which they are committed is unable or unwilling to bring such crimes and criminals to justice, any other state is empowered to do so.
    It was a principle buried in disuse during the tense decades in which the anti-Communism of the Cold War superceded the struggle against German Nazism. But in Spain that summer of 1996, a few determined lawyers and risk-taking judges revived and fortified the principle.
    The actions taken by Castresana, Garcés, and the Spanish judges went virtually unnoticed in the international press in the summer of 1996. Yet the filings set in motion legal proceedings that were destined to change the course of international human rights law. In addition, the resulting judicial