Fifty years in the past on November 25 1975, army intelligence officials from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay collected within the Chilean capital of Santiago to arrange what they referred to as the “Condor System”.
Higher referred to as Operation Condor, this used to be a secret transnational terror community that allowed repressive regimes in those nations to persecute combatants residing in exile. It left at the back of a legacy of torture, in addition to masses of kidnappings, disappearances and murders.
Condor used to be constructed on 3 major operational pillars. First, all intelligence details about perceived subversive actions around the area used to be centralised in a database in Santiago. 2d, an encrypted communications channel let state brokers keep up a correspondence secretly and successfully. And 3rd, the so-called place of work for coordination and complex command oversaw joint operational actions.
Argentina, Chile and Uruguay additionally arrange the Teseo unit to focus on exiles from the ones 3 nations who have been residing in Europe. And whilst Operation Condor led to past due 1978, bilateral operations which principally noticed Argentina collaborate with Brazil, Paraguay and Chile persevered till early 1981.
Operation Condor allowed South American leaders to focus on individuals who had fled their house nations and persevered to denounce the dictatorships from out of the country.
Plancondor.org
As a result of Operation Condor’s top-secret nature, there aren’t any authentic lists of sufferers. However my analysis has showed there have been a minimum of 805 sufferers between August 1969, when a number of South American regimes started taking part in casual techniques, and February 1981.
Whilst sufferers got here from quite a few backgrounds, they have been most commonly political and social activists plus contributors of innovative armed teams, basically from Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.
In search of justice
From 1976, when Condor’s repressive operations peaked, proof used to be being compiled at the atrocities dedicated by way of member states. In 1977, for instance, a Uruguayan journalist referred to as Enrique Rodriguez Larreta gave proof to Amnesty World in London about his abduction in Buenos Aires the former 12 months. He had travelled there to seek for his lacking son.
Rodriguez Larreta recounted how he used to be detained and tortured in 3 secret prisons throughout Argentina and Uruguay, earlier than being launched six months later. His testimony supplied simple proof of the clandestine coordination between South The us’s army regimes.
Additional evidence of Operation Condor’s atrocities used to be supplied in 1979, when American journalist Jack Anderson wrote a piece of writing within the Washington Submit revealing Condor’s function within the assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1976. Letelier used to be a minister within the govt of Chile’s socialist former president, Salvador Allende.
Wider growth in opposition to justice used to be restricted whilst South The us’s dictatorships remained in energy. However the cave in of a number of regimes around the area within the Eighties opened a window of alternative.
This era noticed some groundbreaking achievements together with the Nunca Más (By no means Once more) document, revealed in 1984 by way of Argentina’s Nationwide Fee at the Disappearance of Individuals. Past investigating the army dictatorship’s systematic observe of disappearing other people, the fee used to be the primary authentic state frame to recognise Operation Condor’s transnational terror equipment.
Then again, the potential of seeing perpetrators stand trial for his or her crimes used to be once more behind schedule. So-called impunity rules have been sanctioned by way of democratic governments in Argentina and Uruguay in 1986 and 1987, successfully fighting lawsuits in opposition to other people accused of committing crimes all over the army dictatorships.
Those rules have been handed basically to quell army dissent and save you additional uprisings after the go back to democracy. The rules in Argentina and Uruguay accompanied current amnesty rules in Brazil and Chile.
The tide of justice after all started to show in 1998. That 12 months, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet used to be detained in London to stand fees for human rights abuses, together with Condor atrocities.
Pinochet used to be spared from trial on scientific grounds. However there was substantial growth since then within the investigation, prosecution and sentencing of state brokers for the atrocities dedicated by way of Operation Condor.
Over 100 South American civilian and army officials were sentenced to jail over crimes dedicated underneath Operation Condor.
Francesca Lessa, CC BY-NC-ND
My analysis has mapped 50 felony trials since 1976 that endeavoured to make clear a few of these atrocities. Convictions were passed down in 40 of those trials up to now, with over 100 other people sentenced to jail.
Those come with high-profile figures like former dictators Reynaldo Bignone of Argentina and Juan María Bordaberry of Uruguay. A number of high- and middle-ranking army officials, akin to Chilean colonel Manuel Contreras, Argentine admiral Antonio Vañek and Uruguayan colonel José Nino Gavazzo, have additionally been jailed.
These kind of trials have taken position in South The us, with 13 verdicts passed out in Argentina, 11 in Uruguay and 7 in Chile. In September 2025, retired army intelligence officials Carlos Alberto Rossell and Glauco Yannone have been sentenced in Uruguay to twelve years in jail. Those males have been discovered in charge of abducting and torturing political activists Universindo Rodríguez and Lilián Celiberti, in addition to Celiberti’s two youngsters, within the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre in 1978.
This sentence is very important, regardless of a 4 decade-long extend. In February 1984, Rodríguez and Celiberti have been the primary other people to document a lawsuit in Uruguay for the crimes that they had suffered by the hands of Operation Condor. At the moment, Uruguay used to be nonetheless within the grips of its army dictatorship.
The daughter of Rafaela Filipazzi, who used to be killed by way of Jorge Troccoli in 1977.
Janaina Cesar, CC BY-NC-ND
5 verdicts have additionally been delivered by way of Italian felony tribunals. A Rome court docket sentenced Jorge Troccoli, a former officer within the Uruguayan army, to existence imprisonment in October. He used to be convicted for the murders of Italian Rafaela Filipazzi, Argentine José Agustín Potenza and Uruguayan Elena Quinteros between 1976 and 1977. Troccoli is a twin Uruguayan-Italian nationwide and fled to Italy in 2007 to steer clear of prosecution in Uruguay.
Consistent with Alessia Merluzzi, a attorney I consulted previous to writing this text, this prosecution no longer most effective as soon as once more showed the lifestyles of Operation Condor, it additionally “probed deeper into its violent and operative mechanisms and structures”. Merluzzi added: “It revealed the modus operandi of the repressive agents beyond borders – and the specific, planned and methodical organisation of the atrocities suffered by the three victims”.
Whilst vital growth has been made in opposition to attaining justice for sufferers of Operation Condor, lots of its crimes stay shrouded in impunity and silence. Because the Inter-American Courtroom of Human Rights really helpful in 2021, all former Condor member states will have to paintings in combination to discover the level of this transnational community’s crimes.
