Political Crimes and Abuse of Power

Colombian Army "Facilitated" Paramilitary Operation at Miraflores "From Beginning to End" "Big-Time Narco" Carranza one of the "Best Known" Paramilitaries in Colombia but "Content to Operate Behind the Scenes" Washington, DC, December 21, 2012 – An individual using the reported alias of Colombian billionaire Vнctor Carranza Niсo “freely admitted” that “he and men under his command” were “responsible for the October 1997 Miraflores massacre” and that the Colombian Army “had facilitated the operation ‘from beginning to end,’” according to a formerly-Secret cable from the U.S.

Washington, D.C., July 5, 2012 –An Argentine tribunal today convicted two former military leaders for their roles in the kidnapping and theft of dozens of babies of executed and disappeared political prisoners during the dictatorship. Drawing on critical evidence provided from the United States, the court sentenced General Rafael Videla to 50 years and General Reynaldo Bignone to 15 years in prison for crimes that epitomized the vicious human rights abuses during the military regime that governed Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

Washington, D.C., April 26, 2012 – The former Liberian president Charles Taylor today became the first head of state since Nuremberg convicted by an international court for crimes against humanity, for his role in the decade-long Sierra Leone civil war; and his human rights abuses in Liberia from 1990 to 2003 were likely even more systematic, according to declassified U.S. government documents posted today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org. The U.S.

Washington, D.C. , December 16, 2011 - A Colombian army general acquitted today in one of the country's most infamous human rights cases "actively" collaborated with paramilitary death squads responsible for dozens of massacres, according to formerly secret U.S. records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive.

Washington D.C., November 30, 2011 – Thirty-eight years after the military coup in Chile, a Chilean judge has formally indicted the former head of the U.S. Military Group, Captain Ray Davis, and a Chilean intelligence officer, Pedro Espinoza for the murders of two American citizens in September 1973. The judge, Jorge Zepeda, said he would ask the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize an extradition request for Davis as an "accessory" to the murders of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.

Washington D.C., November 25, 2011 – President Ronald Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment in the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86, and Vice President George H. W. Bush chaired a committee that recommended the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983, according to previously secret Independent Counsel assessments of "criminal liability" on the part of the two former leaders posted today by the National Security Archive.

Washington, D.C., November 22, 2011 - The bodies of two men whose disappearance in 1984 was recorded in the notorious Guatemalan "death squad diary" have been located on a former military base outside the capital and positively identified through DNA testing, according to the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, which announced its findings in a press conference this morning. The remains belong to Amancio Samuel Villatoro and Sergio Saъl Linares Morales, both captured by security forces in separate incidents and never seen by their families again.

Washington, D.C., September 29, 2011 - Twelve years after the assassination of beloved Colombian journalist and political satirist Jaime Garzуn, a newly-declassified State Department cable, published on the Web today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org), supports longstanding allegations that Colombian military officials ordered the killing. Written just days after the murder, the cable from the U.S.

Washington, D.C., March 23, 2011 - Thirty one years ago tomorrow, El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was shot and killed by right-wing assassins seeking to silence his message of solidarity with the country’s poor and oppressed. The assassination shocked Salvadorans already reeling in early 1980 from attacks by security forces and government-backed death squads on a growing opposition movement. Romero’s murder further polarized the country and set the stage for the civil war that would rage for the next twelve years.

Washington, D.C., February 18, 2011 - Twenty-seven years ago today, Guatemalan labor activist Edgar Fernando Garcнa was shot and kidnapped by government security forces off a street in downtown Guatemala City. He was never seen again. In recognition of the anniversary of his disappearance, the National Security Archive today posts the complete text of the historic ruling issued last October by a Guatemalan court that convicted two former policemen to 40 years in prison for the crime, as well as key documents from the Guatemalan National Police Archive that were used in the prosecution.