USA: CALL FOR CLOSURE OF LATIN AMERICAN MILITARY TRAINING INSTITUTE

Описание: (25 Sep 1996) English/Nat

Democratic leaders in the U-S Congress are calling for the immediate closure of the School of the Americas, a training institution for Latin American military officers.

Their demand follows Friday's declassification of documents confirming allegations the school taught torture and murder as means of dealing with insurgency in Latin America.


Democratic leaders of the U-S Congress have fresh ammunition to regain the initiative in a battle that they have been losing for years.

Last Friday night, the Pentagon released declassified training manuals for Latin American officers studying in the U-S.

In them were recommend techniques for dealing with insurgency including bribery, blackmail, threats, torture and murder.

The manuals were written in Spanish with titles like "Interrogation" and "Revolutionary War and Communist Ideology".

They were used in the 1980s to train visiting officers from throughout Latin America at the School of the Americas.

Congressman Joe Kennedy said the documents were irrefutable evidence the 50 year-old school is nothing more than a relic of the Cold War and an embarrassment for the US

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We come here today half a century later to say it's time to shut the school down. Last week the Pentagon revealed what activists opposed to the school have been alleging for years --that foreign military officers were taught to torture and murder to achieve their political objectives."
SUPER CAPTION: Joe Kennedy, US Democratic Congressman

Kennedy has tried for years to close down the school, which was moved from Panama to Fort Benning, Georgia in 1984.

Some 60-thousand Latin American officers, including some of the most notorious human rights abusers in the region, have graduated there.

Kennedy sees himself vindicated by the declassified training manuals.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"These practices, which we know too well, have in fact been used by graduates of the School of the Americas, are totalitarian in nature and show complete disregard for the rule of law and violate every basic tenet of human rights."
SUPER CAPTION: Joe Kennedy, US Democratic Congressman

One of the school's graduates is Panama's Manuel Noriega, now serving a 40-year sentence in the U-S for drug trafficking.

Others include Roberto D'Aubuisson - the leader of El Salvador's death squads - and the officers who conducted the worst massacre of civilians in the Salvadoran civil war.

The Pentagon has defended the school saying it is an important strategic asset with a positive influence on the Latin American military.

But opponents of the school insist it is outrageous such an institution is funded with taxpayers' money and has the official backing of a nation that considers itself the most democratic in the world.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"The information that has come forward is absolutely startling. This is not a school, it is a scandal. And it's a training ground for dictators with manuals on how to murder and torture people."
SUPER CAPTION: Carolyn Maloney, US Democratic Congresswoman

But Maloney, Kennedy and the rest of the School of the Americas' critics have an uphill fight in from of them.

The conservative Congress is very much in favour of the institution and has blocked every effort to shut it down.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
SUPER CAPTION: Joe Kennedy, US Democratic Congressman

The declassification of the manuals is part of a Pentagon program aiming at reviewing intelligence materials to comply with the law.

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