isen.blog

Torture, especially when my country does it and helps others do it, ties my stomach in knots when I think about it. Denial is easier. But the nomination of John Negroponte by the Bush Administration to be U.S. "security" czar demands non-denial.

John Negroponte was US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. This jaw-dropping 1995 article in the Baltimore Sun documents this era with declassified U.S. documents, interviews with survivors of torture by U.S. trained troops that took place with U.S. knowledge, and with a 1993 investigation by the Honduras government itself.

A few excerpts from the Sun article:

"Extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and the lack of due process ... characterized these years of intolerance," stated the [1993] report of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras. "Perhaps more troublesome than the violations themselves was the authorities' tolerance of these crimes and the impunity with which they were committed."

and

"They started with 110 volts," said Miguel Carias, an architectural draftsman who was held captive with Nelson Mackay for a week in 1982. "Then they went up to 220. Each time they shocked me, I could feel my body jump and my mouth filled with a metal taste."

Former members of Battalion 316 [a secret Honduras army unit trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency], interviewed in Canada where they are living in exile, described how prisoners were nearly suffocated with a rubber mask wrapped tightly around their faces. The mask was called "la capucha," or "the hood." Women were fondled and raped, the torturers said.

The body of Mackay, who was 37 years old and the father of five, showed signs of other tortures.

and

Gloria Esperanza Reyes, now 52, speaking in an interview at her home in Vienna, Va., describes how she was tortured with electric wires attached to her breasts and vagina. "The first jolt was so bad I just wanted to die," she said.

and

"The Argentines came in first, and they taught how to disappear people. The United States made them more efficient," said Oscar Alvarez, a former Honduran special forces officer and diplomat who was the general's nephew.

"The Americans ... brought the equipment," he said. "They gave the training in the United States, and they brought agents here to provide some training in Honduras.

There are more gut-wrenching articles in the Baltimore Sun's amazing 1995 series listed in the right sidebar of this. Kudos to the Sun that these are still available! A Baltimore Sun article six months later is based on an interview with Negroponte, who denies any U.S. wrongdoing. The article quotes him saying,

"I do not have any regrets about the way we carried out U.S. policies" in Central America.

Can't we find somebody else to be U.S. "security" czar?