WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
             ISSUE #417, JANUARY 25, 1998
  NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

1. School of the Americas Protesters Get Maximum Sentence
3. Colombia: Leftist Council Member Murdered by Paramilitaries
4. Colombian Former Rebels Protest Arrest of Leader

 
*1. SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS PROTESTERS GET MAXIMUM SENTENCE

After a trial of less than two days, on Jan. 21 US District Judge
Robert Elliott in Columbus, Georgia, handed down a six-month
sentence and a $3,000 fine to 22 people for unlawful entry in a
demonstration at the US Army's Fort Benning on Nov. 16. More than
2,000 people had participated in the nonviolent march, carrying
crosses and cardboard coffins to the site of the US Army's School
of the Americas (SOA), which trains military officers from Latin
America [see Update #408]. Military police arrested 601 people
who continued the procession onto the base itself, and gave most
of them orders barring them from Fort Benning for one year. But
federal prosecutors filed charges against 31 protesters who had
already been banned from the post. Three pleaded no contest in
November; they were sentenced to six months in prison and fined
$3,000, the maximum sentence [see Update #408]. Charges were
dismissed against six others because the government failed to
prove that they had received a letter banning them from the base.
 
The Nov. 16 protest, which marked the anniversary of the 1989
killings of six Jesuit priests by a Salvadoran army unit, was the
largest yet against the SOA, whose graduates include former
Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega and Salvadoran death
squad founder Col. Roberto D'Aubuisson. "There's something wrong
when we who participate in a solemn funeral procession are sent
to prison, while the SOA graduates who did the killing get
amnesty and will not spend one day behind bars," Minneapolis nun
Rita Steinhagen told Judge Elliott, who at 88 is known in
activist circles as "Maximum Bob" and is remembered for the harsh
sentences he gave civil rights activists in the 1960s. "We are
going to come back in greater numbers until that school of death,
that school of horrors in Columbus, Georgia, is shut down
forever," said SOA Watch founder Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who has
served more than three years in prison on sentences from Elliott.
[SOA Watch 1/21/98; Reuter 1/21/98; Columbus (Georgia) Ledger-
Enquirer 1/22/98] SOA Watch is calling for an even greater number
of people this year to make a "commitment to cross" into Fort
Benning in a civil disobedience action scheduled for Nov. 22,
1998. [SOA Watch Update Winter 1998]
 
Listed as worst judge by The American Lawyer in 1983, Elliott
granted a habeas corpus petition to Lt. William Calley in 1974,
setting aside the lieutenant's conviction for ordering a massacre
of peasants in My Lai, Vietnam. Comparing the massacre to
Joshua's destruction of Jericho in the Bible, Elliott ruled that
"if ever there has been a case in which a conviction should be
set aside because of prejudicial publicity, this is it." The
Fifth Circuit found Elliott in error in 1975 and ordered Calley
back to prison. [The American Lawyer July/August 1983]
 
Calls for closing SOA are likely to increase as the school
increases its enrollment of Mexican army officers. On Jan. 12
Rep. Joseph Kennedy II (D-MA), circulated a letter citing the
role of SOA graduates in the Mexican military's "failed...policy"
in the southeastern state of Chiapas [see Update #416]. In 1997
the number of Mexican officers attending classes at SOA jumped to
305, more than double the recent average of 149. In the past the
Mexican military generally avoided the school; the total number
of graduates from 1952 to 1996 was 926. [El Universal (Mexico
City) 1/21/98] Another 1,500 Mexican officers are being trained
by the US Army Special Forces ("Green Berets") at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina. [Nuevo Amanecer Press-Europa 1/20/98]
 
Correction: Update #416 quoted a passage from Rep. Kennedy's
letter saying that SOA grad Gen. Juan Lopez Ortiz "remains
engaged in the Army's operations in Chiapas." In fact, Gen. Lopez
Ortiz was in Chiapas briefly in 1994; more recently he commanded
Military Region 12 in the central state of Guanajuato. In another
passage, not quoted by the Update, Kennedy incorrectly referred
to the role of Col. Julian Guerrero Barrios in a "massacre" in
Jalisco; the charges in Jalisco concern the torture of a dozen
young men and the death of one [see Update #414].
  
*3. COLOMBIA: LEFTIST COUNCIL MEMBER MURDERED BY PARAMILITARIES

On the night of Jan. 20, an armed commando abducted and murdered
36-year old Gloria Helena Cardona Clavijo, a leftist council
member in the municipality of Apartado in the violence-plagued
agro-industrial region of Uraba, Colombia. Cardona was elected to
the council last Oct. 26 on the ticket of the leftist "Action and
Life" movement, and began serving her term on Jan. 1. Action and
Life condemned the murder and blamed it on rightwing paramilitary
groups. According to witnesses, the assailants who dragged
Cardona from her home left a note attributing the murder to
leftist guerrilla groups. Authorities are investigating the note
to establish its veracity. [Notimex 1/21/98]
 
Meanwhile, the national Attorney General's office confirmed on
Jan. 23 that at least 16 people were killed and another 11 left
missing in massacres that took place last December near
Pavarando, in Uraba on the border of Antioquia and Choco
departments [see Updates #412, 413]. The army's 17th Brigade in
Uraba had claimed that the massacres never happened, and accused
local campesinos and the Center for Research and Popular
Education (CINEP)--a respected human rights organization--of
inventing the story in a campaign to discredit the armed forces.
The Attorney General's office is continuing to investigate the
massacres. [El Colombiano (Medellin) 1/24/98]
 
*4. COLOMBIAN FORMER REBELS PROTEST ARREST OF LEADER

A demobilized Colombian rebel group denied on Jan. 19 that 300 of
its members had picked up arms again to demand guarantees and
protection. Local press reports charged that 300 members of the
political party Hope, Peace and Freedom (EPL)--made up of
demobilized members of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) rebel
group--had taken refuge in the mountains after agents of the
Administrative Security Department (DAS, the secret police)
arrested EPL regional leader David Mesa Pena for extortion,
kidnapping and murder on Jan. 18 in the northwestern municipality
of Carepa. [Notimex 1/19/98; El Colombiano 1/24/98]
 
"It's not true that we have returned to the armed struggle,
although it's true that we denounce the lack of compliance with
the peace accords signed with the government in 1991," said the
organization in a communique. A spokesperson for the EPL
political party reiterated that "it's not true that we have
returned to arms, although yes we are hiding in the mountains,
waiting for guarantees and protection." Since the peace accords
were signed in 1991, the EPL political party says that more than
100 of its members or supporters have been murdered, most of them
in northwestern Colombia. The organization says it "feels
betrayed" by the government, and asked the Colombian president to
stop the "dirty war" against its members. [Notimex 1/19/98; EC
1/24/98]
 
A group of nearly 200 demobilized EPL dissidents from the Nueva
Granada neighborhood of San Pedro de Uraba seized the Apartado
mayor's office on Jan. 21 in a peaceful protest against Mesa's
arrest, and to demand guarantees that other EPL members not be
arrested. The protesters left the mayor's office on Jan. 23 after
winning clarifications and revisions of decree 1385, which
dictated the terms of their demobilization. A municipal
government spokesperson explained that the EPL members are afraid
"because their legal situation doesn't seem very clear and they
fear that they might be jailed for crimes committed during their
time within the guerrilla movement."
 
Mesa led the EPL dissidence between 1991 and 1996; in 1996,
according to El Colombiano, he surrendered together with 300
other men to the rightwing paramilitary group Campesino Self-
Defense of Cordoba and Uraba. [EC 1/24/98]
 
Meanwhile, Pierre Gassman, spokesperson for the International
Committee of the Red Cross (CICR) in Colombia, said on Jan. 21
that representatives of several fronts of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC)--the country's largest and most active
leftist rebel group--have denied holding 18 soldiers captured in
a Dec. 21 rebel attack on the Patascoy military base in southern
Colombia [see Update #413], which also left at least 10 soldiers
dead and at least four wounded. "So far the FARC have said that
they have nothing to do with that," said Gassman. The CICR is now
asking other rebel groups if they know where the soldiers are.
The army blames the FARC's southern front for the attack. The
government has dismissed two generals and a colonel in connection
with an official investigation into alleged errors that may have
led to the successful rebel attack on the base. [El Universal
(Caracas, Venezuela) 1/22/98; Notimex 1/23/98; EC 1/21/98] [Note:
Notimex and El Colombiano cited the CICR saying that the FARC had
neither confirmed nor denied any connection to the missing
soldiers from Patascoy; only El Universal said the FARC denied
involvement.]  =========================================================
 
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