[Shadow_Group] Fw: Kissinger may face extradition to Chile

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Guardian Unlimited

Kissinger may face extradition to Chile 

Judge investigating US role in 1973 coup considers forcing former
secretary of state to give evidence 

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago and Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Wednesday June 12, 2002
The Guardian 

Henry Kissinger may face extradition proceedings in connection with the
role of the United States in the 1973 military coup in Chile. 
The former US secretary of state is wanted for questioning as a witness
in the investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the
socialist president, Salvador Allende, by General Augusto Pinochet. 

It focuses on CIA involvement in the coup, whether US officials passed
lists of leftwing Americans in Chile to the military and whether the US
embassy failed to assist Americans deemed sympathetic to the deposed
government. 

Chile's Judge Juan Guzman is so frustrated by the lack of cooperation by
Mr Kissinger that he is now considering an extradition request to force
him to come to Chile and testify in connection with the death of the
American film-maker and journalist Charles Horman, who was killed by the
military days after the coup. 

Horman's story was told in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing, starring
Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. 

Judge Guzman is investigating whether US officials passed the names of
suspected leftwing Americans to Chilean military authorities.
Declassified documents have now revealed that such a list existed. Sergio
Corvalan, a Chilean lawyer, said that he could not divulge the "dozens"
of names on the list. 

At the time of his death, Horman was investigating the murder of Rene
Schneider, the chief of staff in the Chilean army whose support for
Allende and the constitution was seen as an obstacle to the coup. 

The CIA had been involved with groups plotting Schneider's murder,
providing them with weapons and advice, according to a CIA internal
inquiry in 2000. It found that the agency had withdrawn its support for
the plotters before the murder but had paid them $35,000 afterwards "to
maintain the goodwill of the group". 

At the time of his murder, Schneider had five young children, who filed
suit in a Washington DC court last year against Mr Kissinger and other
top officials in the Nixon administration. They are seeking$3m (£2.15m)
in damages. 

Horman's wife, Joyce, suspects that he was targeted because he
unwittingly stumbled upon a gathering of US military personnel in Chile
in the days before the coup. 

The American journalist Marc Cooper and the British journalist
Christopher Hitchens have been in Santiago during the past month to give
evidence in the investigation of America's role. 

Cooper, who was Allende's translator at the time of the coup and now
writes for the Nation and LA Weekly, knew Horman and gave sworn testimony
last month. 

Cooper said: "Guzman says that if the US doesn't act soon on his request
to gather testimony from Kissinger and other US officials, he'll have no
choice but to file for their extradition to Chile." 

Cooper, who wrote the book Pinochet and Me about his time in Chile, said
that the Nixon government had been more interested in supporting General
Pinochet than in investigating the deaths of its citizens at the hands of
the Chilean military. 

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 This is not the first attempt to interview Mr Kissinger about the
turbulent period in Latin America. 

During a visit to London in April, judges in Spain and France
unsuccessfully tried to question him about America's role in Operation
Condor, which has been described as a coordinated hit squad organised
from Chile and including six South American nations aimed at dealing with
leftwing opposition groups. 

Several declassified documents which have emerged over the past two years
have shown an increasingly visible American hand in Operation Condor. 

Hitchens gave evidence on the Operation Condor case which he researched
for his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, published last year. 

In Santiago, Hitchens said: "Today Henry Kissinger is a frightened man.
He is very afraid of the exposure that awaits him." 

Mr Kissinger's lawyer William Rodgers, said that such questions should
properly be directed to the US state department and not to Mr Kissinger.

 
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