An Italian court has ruled South American military dictatorships conspired to kill each other's political opponents. Among those convicted were the former presidents of Bolivia and Peru.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R.Martinez
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A court in Rome on Tuesday convicted eight former South American political and military figures for the murder of 23 Italian citizens during the 1970s and 1980s, as part of what the court ruled was a vast conspiracy by the region's dictatorships to hunt down left-wing political opponents.
Right-wing dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia cooperated in killing thousands of each other's political opponents in the US-backed "Operation Condor."
The court found there was a conspiracy between the Latin American governments and convicted in absentia eight people to life sentences. Among those convicted were former Bolivian President Luis García Meza Tejada, former Peruvian President Francisco Morales Bermúdez, two retired Chilean army officials and an Uruguayan politician. The court acquitted 19 other people.
Several of the convicted are already serving sentences in their home countries.
"It's clear that this conviction confirms that Operation Condor existed and that it was a criminal conspiracy," Prosecutor Tiziana Cugini told Reuters after the ruling. "It's very significant, especially given that heads of state from the time were convicted."
Under Italian law, prosecutors can investigate cases involving the murder of Italian citizens abroad. The ruling can be appealed twice before a final sentence is served.
Most of those involved in the conspiracy are now in their 80s and 90s. Italy may ask for extradition, but given the age of the defendants, it is more likely that they would serve sentences in their own countries.
What's left of the Cold War? Photos by Martin Roemers
Bunkers, tanks and surveillance stations: Dutch photographer Martin Roemers spent 10 years capturing the relics of the Cold War. As tensions rise with Russia, the images, now on show in Berlin, take on new relevance.
Image: Martin Roemers
About to sink
In Martin Roemers photograph, the ruin appears to be suspended on a cloud. This Cold War bunker is about to sink - not into a cloud, but into the Baltic Sea near Latvia. The Cold War, which spanned from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, presented a constant threat to both East and West, though little blood was shed.
Image: Martin Roemers
Preparing for the worst
Both East and West built bunkers, rockets and monitoring stations to protect themselves from the other in the case of an attack. Armament was the policy of the day on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain. Pictured is a storage camp for the German military in a nuclear bunker located in Lorch on the Rhine River.
Image: Martin Roemers
Training for war
From 1998 to 2009, photographer Martin Roemers traveled through 10 countries to portray these "relics of the Cold War." The result was a series of 73 images, many of which are on display at the German Historical Museum in Berlin starting on March 4. Pictured is left-over ammunition at a Soviet training grounds.
Image: Martin Roemers
A new cold war?
Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev spoke of a "new cold war" last month at the Munich Security Conference. Roemers says he doesn't feel that a second cold war is imminent. He is not a political activist, he says, but aims to document what war does to people and places.
Image: Martin Roemers
Generations of politics
In Altengrabow in eastern Germany, Martin Roemers photographed a former Soviet military training facility. What interested him about the location is that multiple generations of soldiers trained here, from troops of the German Empire to the Nazis' Wehrmacht to the Soviets. And today? The place isn't as isolated as it looked. The present-day military, the Bundeswehr, currently trains here.
Image: Martin Roemers
Light at the end of the tunnel
Roemers' photos are not historical images. He visited all of the locations after the Cold War had ended and the troops had pulled out. It was the decay of the objects and landscapes that remained, which particularly captivated him as a photographer. Pictured is the exit from a nuclear bunker in Great Britain. The exhibition in Berlin runs from March 4 to August 14, 2016.
