Human Rights and Genocide

Washington, DC, February 1, 2011 - The U.S. government’s opposition to the International Criminal Court held up deployments of peacekeeping forces in Sudan and slowed the eventual indictment of Sudanese leaders who perpetrated genocide in Darfur, according to the new book, Fighting for Darfur, by Rebecca Hamilton, and documents she obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, posted today by the National Security Archive. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations predicted a “train wreck” on Darfur policy in January 2005 because the U.S.

Washington, DC, January 28, 2011 - A new documentary film about human rights in Guatemala featuring National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, will be screened tonight at the Sundance Resort where Kate Doyle, Almudena Bernabeu of the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and film makers Pamela Yates, Paco de Onнs and Peter Kinoy, will attend the screening and speak to the audience after the film.

Washington, D.C., September 29, 2010 - The U.S. ambassador to Colombia reported in 1998 that the "systematic arming and equipping of aggressive regional paramilitaries" was "pivotal" to the military success of Gen. Rito Alejo del Rнo Rojas, now on trial for murder and collaboration with paramilitary death squads while commander of a key army unit in northern Colombia. The Secret "Biographic Note" from Ambassador Curtis Kamman is one of several documents published today by the National Security Archive pertaining to Del Rнo, whose trial resumes this month after years of impunity and delay.

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2010 - Documents posted by the National Security Archive on the 40th anniversary of the death of U.S. advisor Dan Mitrione in Uruguay show the Nixon administration recommended a “threat to kill [detained insurgent] Sendic and other key [leftist insurgent] MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed.” The secret cable from U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, made public here for the first time, instructed U.S.

Washington, D.C., June 11, 2010 – To mark the first-ever criminal conviction in Colombia's infamous Palace of Justice case, the Archive today posts a selection of key declassified documents pertaining to the episode, including a 1999 U.S. Embassy cable that found that Colombian Army soldiers under the command of Col. Alfonso Plazas Vega had "killed a number of M-19 members and suspected collaborators hors de combat ["outside of combat"], including the Palace's cafeteria staff." On Wednesday, a Colombian court sentenced retired Col.

Washington, D.C. - January 20, 2011 - Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes was arrested in Alberta, Canada on January 18, 2011 on charges of naturalization fraud in the United States. Sosa Orantes, 52, is a former commanding officer of the Guatemalan Special Forces, or Kaibil unit, which brutally murdered more than 250 men, women and children during the 1982 massacre in Dos Erres, Guatemala. Sosa Orantes, a resident of Riverside County, California where he was a well known martial arts instructor, was arrested near the home of a relative in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.

Washington, DC, March 30, 2010 - For the first time in Latin America, a judge has sent a former head of state to prison for the crime of an "Attack against the Constitution." In an unprecedented ruling last month in Montevideo, former Uruguayan President Juan Marнa Bordaberry was sentenced to serve 30 years for undermining Uruguay's constitution through an auto-coup in June 1973, and for his responsibility in nine disappearances and two political assassinations committed by the security forces while he was president between 1972 and 1976. Declassified U.S.

Washington, DC, March 9, 2010 - A Mexican human rights activist who was orphaned in infancy when her parents disappeared at the hands of government forces filed a petition before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) yesterday, drawing on dozens of declassified U.S. and Mexican documents as evidence.

Washington, D.C., February 2, 2010 - Twenty-nine years ago today, less than two weeks after his inauguration, President Ronald Reagan rolled out the welcome mat at the White House for South Korean president and strongman Chun Doo Hwan, despite internal U.S. government concerns about Chun's poor human rights record. Over the previous year, Chun's regime had brutally suppressed the Kwangju student protests and thrown dissident leader Kim Dae Jung into prison.

Diciembre 8, 2009, Washington, DC - El National Security Archive revela hoy un documento que Jaime Dri, único sobreviviente, conoció directamente sobre la Operación México que forzó a desaparecidos detenidos en Rosario a participar en un escuadrón de la muerte para infiltrar a la dirección de Montoneros en Ciudad de México en enero de 1978. "DRI JAIME 'Pelado'" indica el documento, estuvo presente cuando vino "de regreso de México, la comisión oficial" que salió de Rosario.