Daily Headlines: May 30, 2016 (Multiple Updates)

* Argentina: An Argentine court last week sentenced ex-dictator Reynaldo Bignone to twenty years in prison for his role in the infamous Operation Condor secret program to monitor and murder dissidents across South America.

* Mexico: Kidnapped Mexican soccer striker Alan Pulido is said to be in good health following his rescue by federal and state security forces in the early morning hours today.

Update: Questions have been raised over the nature of Pulido's liberation with conflicting accounts claiming that he allegedly fought off his captors and may not have been rescued by security agents. 
 
* Puerto Rico: Several thousand protesters marched in San Juan yesterday to call for the release of independence activist Oscar Lopez Rivera on the 35th anniversary of his imprisonment.

* Brazil: The administration of acting President Michel Temer has once more come under fire after a recording leaked of anti-corruption chief Fabiano Silveira giving legal advice to embattled Senate leader Renan Calheiros.

Update: Silveira resigned from his post on Monday and, thus, becomes the second member of Temer's cabinet to quit in the span of a week.

YouTube Source – CCTV America

Online Sources including Update – Fox News Latino, Reuters, ABC News, The Atlantic, BBC News, Vice News

Daily Headlines: October 14, 2014

* South America: An Italian judge ruled that twenty-one officials from former military dictatorships in four South American countries should be put on trial for their alleged role in Operation Condor.

* Bolivia: Newly reelected President Evo Morales promised to not enact anymore major nationalizations and claimed that he will pursue “realistic, practical” economic policies.

* Venezuela: The U.N. Human Rights Council called on Venezuelan authorities to “immediately release” imprisoned opposition politician Leopoldo López.

* Mexico: Two gunmen murdered a Sonoran activist and radio show host while he was presenting his program live on the air.

Video Source – YouTube user JourneymanVOD
 
Online Sources – spyghana.com; Reuters; MercoPress; The Guardian

Brazilian Court: Extradite Cordero

Brazil's Supreme Court approved the extradition of Manuel Cordero to Argentina this week.

Cordero, a former Uruguayan Army colonel and intelligence officer, is wanted for his involvement in Operation Condor in the 1970s. He is accused of torturing, disappearing and murdering leftist Uruguayan activists in the infamous "Automotores Orletti" clandestine detention center in Buenos Aires.

Cordero fled to Brazil from Uruguay in 2004 after an investigation was launched against him in his home country that would have led to his immediate arrest. In 2007 he was detained in Brazil. He has been on house arrest since December of last year.

Cordero will be sent to Argentina due to the fact that, under a Mercosur treaty, the country where the events originally took place has priority when asking for extradition.

Online sources- AFP, El Espectador, Wikipedia
Image-AFP

Life in jail for ex-Pinochet official

The head of national security under former dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile was given a life sentence in prison on Monday. Ex-general Manuel Contreras (image) was formally convicted for the 1974 murders of former Chilean Army commander-in-chief Carlos Prats and his wife while in exile in Argentina.

Aside from heading the DINA, Contreras had been one of the architects behind the infamous Operation Condor. (Operation Condor was an intelligence alliance between six rightist South American regimes during the “Dirty War” with the goal of eliminating dissent).

The kin of the late Prats expressed measured satisfaction over the Chilean court’s ruling:

"This sentence is justice for all that our parents lived through," Angelica Prats, one of the murdered couple's daughters, told reporters at the courts.

Her sister Cecilia lamented the fact that Pinochet, who died in 2006, never faced a full trial for crimes during his 1973-1990 dictatorship, when about 3,000 people were killed and another 28,000 tortured -- most of them suspected leftists.

Image- BBC News

Sources- earthtimes.org, McClatchy Bureau, BBC News, MSNBC