Published at: 27/11/2024 10:00 PM

(EL NACIONAL, September 22, 1996 and EL GLOBO, November 20 to 30, 1996)

• After two months of consecutive reporting on the Pentagon Report, there was no doubt that Venezuelan soldiers were trained at the School of the Americas, located in Fort Gulick, Panama.
• The first intensive course on methods of torture and disappearance, “Against Irregular Forces”, was given, for five weeks, in the Panama Canal by Pentagon agents, for officials of the Venezuelan State's law enforcement agencies, between May and June 1962 (newspaper El Impulso, Barquisimeto, June 2, 1962).
• Later, in 1996, during investigations into the torture and extermination manuals used by the governments of Raúl Leoni and Rafael Caldera I, journalist Mark Lane wrote a book, based on interviews, in which he revealed that the controversial declassified Pentagon documents confirmed that American experts continued to teach such extermination courses until 1991, whose instructors were veterans of the Vietnam War.
• These courses, taught at the School of the Americas, were attended by soldiers and police from 11 countries, including Venezuela. A country where such procedures resulted in more than 1,000 missing persons, between 1964-1969 alone.
• Among others, the purpose of such courses, as reported by the New York Times, was the creation of an inter-American army with a Yankee generalate. In other words, the elimination of the Armed Forces throughout Latin America and the subordination of all their contingents to the military leadership of the United States.
• As a result of these publications, El Globo held a forum on the methods of extermination applied by the Pentagon in Venezuela, attended by, among others, General Oswaldo Sujú Raffo, former Inspector of the Armed Forces. When questioned about this matter, and to get out of the way, he declared: “If I knew that that was the subject I would not have come... In this case, it would have to be the American embassy that shows what the torture and extermination courses were and the lists of those who did them.”
• In response to these statements, María Teresa Tejero Cuenca, sister of the disappeared Alejandro Tejero Cuenca, responded to Sujú Raffo: “Political detainees were tortured to death and then disappeared... It is not only a matter of capturing the material perpetrators, but also those who gave the orders as intellectual authors of the systematic violation of human rights in Venezuela must be brought to trial.”
• Tarek William Saab, as Coordinator of the Committee on the Disappeared, explained that “this is not a witch-hunt, but rather an attempt to make forced disappearances and torture known and recognized in order to determine the responsibilities and face the impunity that causes them. Crimes against humanity do not have a statute of limitations.”

Mazo News Team