POLITICS-US: A Tale of Two Terrorists

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 22 1998 (IPS) - “We believe he should be extradited and brought to justice, and we hope a way will be found to extradite him … We have no doubt that this man is a terrorist, and he, therefore, should receive no safe haven.”

So declared State Department spokesman James Rubin when asked last week about Turkey’s demand that Italy extradite Abdallah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the insurgent group which has waged a 14-year war for Kurdish self-rule in south- eastern Turkey.

Rubin’s remarks on Ocalan, echoed on Friday by his boss, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, contrasted sharply with his silence when asked about the extradition of another notorious terrorist, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who has been held in Britain for the past five weeks pending a judgement on a Spanish extradition request.

“It is not for us to publicly say how such an extradition request should be handled by other courts,” Rubin said Nov. 9. “It remains our position that the Spanish extradition request for Pinochet is one between the U.K., Spain and Chile,” he went on.

So how is it that the State Department feels unable to comment about Pinochet’s extradition case, currently on appeal to the British House of Lords, but feels no such constraint when it comes to Ocalan’s extradition from Italy? The question is even more significant when it is considered that, unlike the PKK, Pinochet has been directly implicated in terrorist acts which not only killed a U.S. citizen, but took place on American soil?

“No two situations are the same,” said Rubin. Pressed on the differences, he volunteered that “in the case of the PKK, we’re talking about an ongoing terrorist organisation with a leader who is leading an ongoing terrorist operation. In the case of Chile, you’re talking about a legal question between three countries about events that occurred in the past…”

But how does that explanation square with Albright’s injunction just two months ago, shortly after the terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? “We must strive to ensure that sooner or later, one way or another, terrorists are held accountable for their crimes,” she said.

Or with President Bill Clinton, when he exhorted the members of the U.N. General Assembly on Sep. 21 “to give terrorists no support, no sanctuary, to act together to step up extradition and prosecution.”

“If Clinton wants to show he’s serious about terrorism, he should ensure that those who have committed terrorism in the past are brought to justice,” says lawyer Sam Buffone. He represents the families of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the two people killed by a car bomb explosion set off by Pinochet’s agents in Washington, less than a mile from the White House.

That was on Sep 21, 1976, exactly 22 years before Clinton’s UN speech.

Chile denied any involvement in the bombing, but an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) led to the criminal conviction of several of the assassins – a U.S. citizen working for the Chilean secret police (DINA), two Cubans he hired to detonate the bomb, and a Chilean army captain working for DINA.

In 1995, two Chilean generals, including Manuel Contreras, DINA’s chief from 1974 to 1977, were imprisoned for their roles in the conspiracy to assassinate Letelier, a former Chilean defence minister. Contreras recently filed a sworn affidavit that Pinochet, to whom he reported directly, had approved all orders he had carried out.

Letelier’s murder was part of a pattern of killings of Pinochet’s foes and possible rivals who fled Chile for North America, Europe and elsewhere in Latin America after the bloody military coup d’etat which brought him to power in Sep, 1973.

It was also linked to Operation Condor, a murderous scheme believed to have been organised and overseen by Pinochet, in which hundreds of left-wing dissidents in Latin America’s military- dominated Southern Cone region were “disappeared” by DINA and other secret police forces in each others’ countries.

Operation Condor lies at the heart of the two-year investigation by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, whose warrant led to the 82-year-old Pinochet’s arrest in London five weeks ago, while he was being treated for back problems.

Garzon requested information in Washington’s possession about Operation Condor under a bilateral mutual legal assistance treaty. Until now, however, the Justice Department has only provided documents which are in the public domain, according to knowledgeable sources.

Last month, Garzon filed new requests for classified documents on Operation Condor and related cases, including the Letelier- Moffitt bombing, and those requests are expected to be formally transmitted by Spain this week. Garzon is also eager to come to the United States both to review such documents and to take the testimony of certain officials if the Justice Department gives him a favourable reply.

Those documents, which are held by the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other agencies which rarely make sensitive information available, “help link Pinochet directly to acts of international terrorism,” according to a letter to Clinton from Rep. George Miller and some 35 other U.S. members of congress. Since Pinochet’s arrest, all have been urging Washington to speak out strongly in favour of his extradition to Spain.

So far, however, Washington appears determined to maintain its public silence, both on the Spanish extradition case and on the possibility that the United States could itself request Pinochet’s extradition here in connection with the Letelier-Moffitt case over which Washington has clear jurisdiction.

Earlier this month, the ‘New York Times’ reported that Justice Department officials were discussing a possible extradition if the House of Lords reject Spain’s request. Because the terrorist act took place on U.S. soil, Washington’s request would be legally less controversial than Spain’s, which is based on less well- established legal doctrines, including claims of universal jurisdiction for crimes of genocide and torture.

But the State Department took pains after the story was published to deny that Washington was seriously considering extradition. It insisted that the issue had been discussed only at “lower levels” in the Justice Department, and formerly forthcoming Department officials have since refused to answer reporters’ questions about the case.

Meanwhile, Buffone, who in 1980 won a three-million-dollar civil judgment against the Pinochet government on behalf of the Letelier-Moffitt families, is still waiting for formal replies to his request for a meeting with Albright and Attorney-General Janet Reno to discuss U.S. policy on terrorism and Pinochet.