IW Podcasts
After 12 Years On The Run, Former Minister In Prison For Crimes Against Humanity
Comment on this post
By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
ASUNCION, Paraguay - Paraguay's former interior minister Sabino Montanaro, 86, was transferred earlier this week from a police hospital to prison. He is to remain in prison pursuant to a warrant for his arrest issued in 1997.
Montanaro is charged with torture and other crimes against humanity committed during the twenty-two years he was part of the thirty-five year dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner.
Montanaro left Paraguay after a coup in 1989 overthrew Stroessner. The former minister sought asylum in Honduras and had remained there as political refugee for twenty years until last month, when he returned unexpectedly to Paraguay.
Montanaro’s attorneys are challenging the arrest based on the fact that Paraguay allows defendants over 70 years-old to be in home detention during criminal prosecution. Defense counsel also question whether Montanaro can be prosecuted due his frail physical and mental condition.
Montanaro was transferred from the police hospital amid a strong show of security measures in the face of heated demonstrations by the relatives of those who went missing during the dictatorship.
"This is an historic moment. He is the last link in our fight against impunity", said Guillermina Kanonikoff, the widow of Mario Schaerer Prono. Schaerer Prono was a member of a clandestine student organization that opposed Stroessner. He was captured, tortured and killed. Kanonikoff added that the former minister was part of a regime that decided "who lived, who died and who disappeared."
Stroessner himself died at the age of 93 in 2006 while in exile in Brazil. Paraguayans remain divided over his regime. Although stable, Paraguay became a haven for Nazi war criminals, deposed dictators and smugglers under Stroessner.
During Stroessner’s exile in Brazil, Paraguay requested his extradition pursuant to homicide charges but Brazil refused to hand him over lacking an extradition treaty.
Stroessner’s regime is considered the second longest dictatorship of the 20th century, exceeded only by that of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Stroessner aligned himself with the repressive Condor Plan promoted by the U.S. as an antiterrorist organization, and which included other totalitarian governments of South America.
The plan was a military agreement created by Chile’s Pinochet created to fight back those who opposed his politics. The military governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay joined the Condor Plan, which resulted in thousands of victims, especially in the 70s and 80s.
Montanaro faces several lawsuits for ordering the torture and death of hundreds of Paraguayans, as part of the repressive Condor Plan.
In 2004, Paraguay created a Truth and Justice Commission to investigate human rights violations during the Stroessner dictatorship. In the report, released in August 2008, the Commission puts the number of direct and indirect victims of the dictatorship at 128,076. The figure includes victims of forced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, detention, torture, rape and political exile. Of this total, 59 were the victims of extrajudicial execution, and 337 were "disappeared."
For more information, please see:
El Pais - Encarcelado un ex ministro del dictador Stroessner en Paraguay - 25 June 2009
El Mercurio - Presidente paraguayo pide conocer paradero de DD.DD. durante dictadura de Stroessner – 05 May 2009
Ultima Hora - Sabino Augusto Montanaro regresa al Paraguay luego de 20 años – 01 May 2009
Inter Press Service News Agency - Rights-Paraguay: President Apologizes to Victims of Dictatorship – 28 August 2008
U.S. Department of State – 2002 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Paraguay
Windows between Two Worlds - The Condor Plan and Dictatorship in Paraguay
A prison (from Old French prisoun)[1] is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Other terms are penitentiary, correctional facility, and jail (or gaol), although in the United States "jail" and "prison" refer to different subtypes of correctional facility. Prisons are conventionally institutions which form part of the criminal justice system of a country, such that imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime.
A criminal suspect who has been charged with or is likely to be charged with criminal offense may be held on remand in prison if he is denied or unable to meet conditions of bail, or is unable or unwilling to post bail. A criminal defendant may also be held in prison while awaiting trial or a trial verdict. If found guilty, a defendant will be convicted and may receive a custodial sentence requiring imprisonment.
As well as convicted or suspected criminals, prisons may be used for internment of those not charged with a crime. Prisons may also be used as a tool of political repression to detain political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, and "enemies of the state", particularly by authoritarian regimes. In times of war or conflict, prisoners of war may also be detained in prisons. A prison system is the organizational arrangement of the provision and operation of prisons, and depending on their nature, may invoke a corrections system. Although people have been imprisoned throughout history, they have also regularly been able to perform prison escapes.
Posted by: Buy Cialis | 18 December 2009 at 18:23
hello...freinds this is very useful site for sexual health medicine.
Viagra Online
Posted by: Viagra Online | 29 January 2010 at 03:29
hello...freinds this is very useful site for sexual health medicine.
Viagra Online
Posted by: Viagra Online | 29 January 2010 at 03:30