A trial under way in Argentina is expected to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with one another in the 1970s and ’80s to kill political dissidents in a campaign known as “Operation Condor.”

Military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay worked together to track down, kidnap and kill people they labeled as terrorists: left-wing activists, labor organizers, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families. “The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset,” “Democracy Now!” reports.

John Dinges, author of “The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents,” discusses the right-wing crusade:

“In the 1970s, Pinochet convinced the other countries—Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay—to go along with him, with the argument that there are these guerrilla operations that are a threat to all of them,” he explains. “And there was indeed a guerrilla operation, called the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta, of people who were taking up arms against these governments. And the idea was that they would cooperate in tracking these people down. And they did.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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#augusto pinochet#democracy now#henry kissinger#latin america#terrorism