As lists of the "most wanted terrorists" and nations labelled as harbouring terrorists have been
issued in the past week, the names missing from the list speak volumes about American political
motivation.
Not a single one of the paramilitary death squads which operate in Columbia, Mexico, Guatemala
or El Salvador is listed, despite the fact that they have tortured, murdered and "disappeared" tens of
thousands of innocent civilians. Many of these groups are still receiving financial and material
support from the United States. Including them in these lists would inevitably focus attention on the
fact that many of their leading members are graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA), based
in Fort Bening, Georgia (now known as The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation). Although it operates under the auspices of the Organization of American States, the
SOA is administered by the U.S. Defence Department and entirely funded by the American
government.
First established in Panama in 1946, the SOA was kicked out under the terms of the Panama
Canal Treaty by then President Jorge Illueca, who called the school "the biggest base for
destabilization in Latin America." Illueca nicknamed it the "School of Coups"; its other nickname
is the "School of Assassins."
The SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American and Caribbean basin soldiers in its 55 years.
The curriculum at the Fort Benning institution includes counterinsurgency, military intelligence,
interrogation techniques, sniper fire, infantry and command tactics, irregular and psychological
warfare and jungle operations.
The SOA has been linked to some of the worst massacres in Latin American history. The
following are just a few examples:
An investigation into the massacre of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter at the
Central American University in El Salvador in 1989 by a Salvadoran army patrol found that
19 of the 27 officers who took part in the massacre were SOA graduates. In fact, almost 75
per cent of the Salvadoran officers implicated in seven other massacres during El Salvador's
civil war, including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1989, received training
at the SOA.
In Honduras, the five ranking officers who organized, with US complicity, the death squad
known as Intelligence Battalion 3-15 in the mid-1980s were SOA graduates. Captain Pio
Flores, another Honduran SOA graduate, is reported to have used his house as a torture and
detention centre during the Honduran army's crackdown on communists, socialists, trade
unionists, religious leaders and those who worked for human rights organizations.
Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of the Salvadoran death squads that participated in the El
Mozote massacre of 900 men, women and children, was also a graduate. So were Manuel
Noriega, the ex-Panamanian dictator and former U.S. ally who is currently serving 40 years
for drug trafficking in a U.S. penitentiary, Omar Torrijos of Panama, Guillermo Rodriguez
of Ecuador and Juan Velasco Avarado of Peru, all of whom overthrew constitutionally
elected civilian governments and have been accused of murdering and torturing opponents.
Another a graduate is Manuel Antonio Callejas, the chief of Guatemalan intelligence in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, when thousands of political opponents were assassinated or
"disappeared".
In 1992, Colombia's Lieutenant Colonel Castano was allowed to attend the SOA so that he
could escape a criminal investigation into his role in the Gusagasuga massacre of a peasant
family in Colombia. He returned to his country after being granted an amnesty.
Even Costa Rica, which officially abolished its army in 1948, has sent 2,500 members of its
police force for training at the SOA. While the justification for this has been that they need
to learn the latest techniques to fight narcotics trafficking, less than a hundred took courses
in this subject. The rest were trained in military intelligence, psychological warfare, sniper
and commando tactics, irregular warfare and counterinsurgency. Graduates in Costa Rica
have been linked by several human rights groups to the Cobra Commando, a paramilitary
group that keeps the narcotics pipeline in the country open by torturing and murdering the
indigenous Talamanca people who live in the jungles through which cocaine is transported.