A look at the Operation Condor conspiracy in South America

 

US

Published May 27, 2016

 Associated Press





 FILE - In this Sept. 1988 file photo, Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet is flanked by subordinates at a ceremony in Santiago, Chile. With a world divided by the Cold War, South America’s dictatorships in 1975 agreed to start exchanging information on political dissidents, trade unionists, students and any individual suspected of being leftist. The goal was to hunt down and eliminate the enemies of the dictatorships across the continent and beyond. According to declassified documents, various agencies of the U.S. government were aware of the plan. (AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin, File) (The Associated Press)



 FILE - In this March 24, 1976 file photo, Argentina's dictator Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, center, is sworn-in as president at the Government House in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With a world divided by the Cold War, South America's dictatorships in 1975 agreed to start exchanging information on political dissidents, trade unionists, students and any individual suspected of being leftist. The goal was to hunt down and eliminate the enemies of the dictatorships across the continent and beyond. According to declassified documents, various agencies of the U.S. government were aware of the plan. (AP Photo/Eduardo Di Baia, File) (The Associated Press)



 FILE - In this July 9, 1982 file photo, Argentina's last dictator, General Reynaldo Bignone, arrives for a religious ceremony at the Cathedral in Buenos Aires. A court in Argentina has sentenced the former junta leader to 20 years in prison for Operation Condor crimes. The secret conspiracy was launched by six South American dictators in the 1970s in a combined effort to track down their enemies and eliminate them. The federal court ruled Friday, May 27, 2016. Bignone is already serving life sentences for multiple human rights violations during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. (AP Photo/Eduardo Di Baia, File) (The Associated Press)



BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina's last dictator and 14 other former military officials were sentenced Friday to prison for human rights crimes committed during the Operation Condor conspiracy. Here is a look at the clandestine program's main features:

WHAT WAS OPERATION CONDOR?

It was a coordinated effort by the military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil to hunt down and eliminate opponents and leftists across the continent and beyond. It operated from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.

HOW DID IT WORK?

Operation Condor officially began in 1975, when South America's dictatorships agreed to start exchanging information on political dissidents, trade unionists, students and anyone suspected of being leftist, especially those who had sought refuge in other countries. According to declassified documents, various U.S. government agencies were aware of the plan.

The covert operation involved the deployment of special transnational teams to kidnap subversive "targets," who were then interrogated and tortured in seven clandestine prisons located on military or police bases in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile. The dissidents were sometimes returned to their country of origin and disappeared.

Condor's agents also assassinated political leaders seen as influencing public opinion against the military regimes. Some of their targets were in the United States and Europe. The September 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier, the ex-foreign minister of Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende, was the best-known case. Letelier, and his U.S. aide Ronni Moffitt, were killed by a bomb placed in his car in Washington D.C. Investigators found that the Chilean dictatorship's spy agency, known as DINA, and an anti-Castro group, many of whose members had been trained by the CIA, were behind the assassination.

WHO WERE CONDOR'S MASTERMINDS?

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, Bolivia's Hugo Banzer, Argentine dictator Jorge Videla and Juan Maria Bordaberry of Uruguay. While no representative of Brazil signed the operation's charter, its government cooperated with the program and dissidents were killed and kidnapped in its territory.

HOW MANY VICTIMS?

According to a 2015 report by UNESCO's International Center for the Promotion of Human Rights, Operation Condor had 376 victims: 177 Uruguayans, 72 Argentines, 64 Chileans, 25 Paraguayans, 15 Peruvians, 12 Bolivians, five Brazilians, three Cubans, two Americans and a Spaniard.



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