Pinochet Regime Linked to Euro Arms + Drug Rackets
by Gustavo Gonzalez
| |
|
by Gustavo Gonzalez |
|
|
|
(IPS) SANTIAGO --
The
secret police under the Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) maintained close ties with drugs and arms traffickers, according to "La delgada l’nea blanca" (The Thin White Line), a book published last week in Santiago, Buenos Aires and Madrid.
Chilean journalist Rodrigo de Castro, co-author of the book with fellow journalist Juan Gasparini, of Argentina, told a foreign press conference that the work is the fruit of investigation and research that began in the early 1990s. In "La delgada l’nea blanca," the authors establish that the links between the dictatorship and the mafias involved in the international arms and drug trade originated at the beginning of the Pinochet regime through then-chief of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Manuel Contreras, who is now behind bars for other crimes. De Castro, current editor of MTG newspaper and formerly a writer for the now-defunct Analisis magazine, explained that DINA would set up ghost companies as fronts to finance international operatives, through which it did business with anti-Castro Cuban groups and neo-fascist Italians, among others. Leaders of those groups were in turn connected with other political-leaning organizations with mafia relations, such as Propaganda Due (P2) of Italy, which turned to dealing in narcotics and illegally moving weapons in order to finance their activities, De Castro said. The book indicates that, just as DINA worked with arms and drugs dealers, so did the CIA, especially in supporting the Contra war operating out of Honduras and El Salvador to destabilize the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The United States also played a double game in the Iran-Iraq war, with the CIA organizing indirect weapons supplies for the Iraqis, while the National Security Council did the same in support of Iran, according to the investigative journalists. They then explain that Chile became involved in much the same way through businessman Carlos Cardoen as a provider of cluster bombs for Baghdad, and through its Army Materiel and Armaments Factory, which produced the same weapons to sell to Teheran.
|
|
|
Contreras,
as head of DINA, was the key in the first phase of the organization's alliance with arms and drugs traffickers, linked with the anti-Castro Cubans and neo-fascists, says the book.
Later, during the Iran-Iraq war, that role fell to then Chilean army major, Alvaro Corbalan. Both Contreras and Corbalan at some point had served as head of personal security for the Pinochet-Hiriart family. Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, the former dictator's eldest child, lived in Los Angeles, California, from 1983 to 1987, allegedly establishing contacts there with drug traffickers who were also connected to Chilean businessman Edgardo Bathich, according to the testimonies De Castro collected. The investigative book also points to ties between arms and drugs dealers with cases such as the kidnapping and later assassination of DINA agent and chemist, Eugenio Berrios, in Uruguay, as well as arms smuggling to Croatia in 1993, which involved the mysterious death of the Chilean army's Col. Edgardo Hoover. "The Thin White Line" implicates leaders of the anti-Castro and neo-fascist groups in drug trafficking activities, and involvement with arms dealers, including Monzer Al Kassar, a Syrian national. According to Italian justice sources, the neo-fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie worked for DINA, performing special operations, including the October 1975 attack in Rome that gravely injured Chile's former vice president Bernardo Leighton and his wife Ana Fresno. Four Cuban anti-Castro groups worked for DINA and took part in the assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his assistant, U.S. citizen Ronni Moffit, in Washington, DC in a terrorist attack Sept. 21, 1976. The book says that justice and police authorities in Chile investigated businessman Bathich, Al Kassar's cousin, on drug trafficking suspicions. But the officials allegedly ran into the wall of protection surrounding him, provided by the top brass of Chile's Intelligence Directorate of the Army (DINE), the Carabineros militarized police, as well as magistrates. Bathich and Al Kassar participated in the operations to provide war materiel, which also served as routes to move cocaine, says the De Castro and Gasparini book. Al Kassar, according to U.S. government sources, controls 30 to 40 percent of the drugs and arms trafficking in an area that encompasses Lebanon, Syria and Bulgaria. Al Kassar's criminal record began to come to light in 1992, when Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon ordered his arrest upon arrival at the Madrid airport. Travelling with him was Bathich, who was also taken into custody. Judge Garzon launched what has become known as the Pinochet Case when in 1998 he ordered the arrest of the former dictator, who was in London. Pinochet remained under detention 503 days, until British Home Secretary Jack Straw released him citing the aging general's failing health. Marco Antonio Pinochet Hiriart, the second of the former dictator's sons, is currently a partner in the Lanchas Chaparral company, which belongs to Bathich. De Castro followed the lines of arms and drugs contacts in Chile, while other trails were uncovered by Gasparini, one of the few journalists to interview Al Kassar, in the Syrian's luxurious mansion in Marbella, Spain.
Albion Monitor
December 11, 2000 (http://www.monitor.net/monitor) All Rights Reserved. Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format. |
