``Ignacio Ellacuria and Martin-Baro are now dead...We will continue killing Communists. We are the First Brigade'' --"Threat issued through a bullhorn from a car driving past the offices of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese [the day following the murder of the Jesuits, cook, and her daughter]" --New York Times - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --> [Send the 1-line message GET JOYA BACKGRND ACTIV-L to ] [LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET for a copy of this file. ] --> [Send GET ACTIV-L ARCHIVE ACTIV-L to above address for a ] [listing with brief descriptions of other files available] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ################################################################## Blood Money -- Assassin says he slit throats while U.S. wrote checks ------------------------------------------------------------------ [In These Times, Nov 15-21,'89;info on 1st Brigade dating to 11/1/89] ################################################################## WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Outraged by the October 31 bombing of a union office that killed 10 people, Salvadoran labor leaders and the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) immediately blamed the armed forces and the right-wing government of President Alfredo Cristiani. Those allegations were bolstered the next day in Washington by a Salvadoran army deserter who told journalists that the San Carlos army barracks in San Salvador housed a special unit of military hit men. Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, 28, says he was a member of the First Infantry Brigade's intelligence unit. He was initially in charge of capturing suspected leftist subversives and gathering information from informants. Later he was promoted to a special hit squad within the intelligence unit that executed prisoners after they had been interrogated. He says his job was to kill prisoners, mask the army's involvement in the murders and then dispose of the bodies. "My job was only to kill," he says, claiming that the murders were conducted on the written order of the First Infantry Brigade commander, Col. Francisco Elena Fuentes. Joya Martinez says he participated in eight of the more than 70 death-squad executions that the First Brigade conducted during the first seven months in 1989. He usually strangled his victims, slit their throats, or injected them with poison. The hit squad was under strict orders not to kill with fire-arms, because the bullets might be traced back to the military. `Have you rever seen the look on the face of someone as you cut their throat?' he asks. `I know I cannot bring back the dead, but I can stop [the death squads] from continuing to operate the same way.' Joya Martinez claims he was forced to flee El Salvador after a failed operation publicly linked the First Brigade to the death squads. His superiors were, he says, setting him up to be the fall guy so they could murder him and provide deniability for the bungled operation. He also says the hit squad operated with the tacit support of two U.S. military officers who helped finance the group's activities, and worked in the intelligence unit's headquarters. He says the U.S. officers helped finance the group's activities by writing checks for its operating expenses. Although the U.S. officers were briefed on the unit's activities, they were not given reports on the executions, Joya Martinez says, adding that the Americans appeared unwilling to know about the operations they were funding. `We provided them with copies of all the reports from our agents on clandestine captures, interrogations, the results of interrogations, other operations, but we did not provide them with reports on the executions. They did not want to hear of the actual killings.' According to Joya Martinez, when the death squad's civilian vehicles began to draw attention inside the intelligence unit's restricted compound, the U.S. officers agreed to rent a safe house for the assassination unit. But, he adds, the U.S. advisors did not want to know how it would be used. `I do not believe the American advisers could not have known what we were doing,' he says. `They funded everything we did.' [...] [From In These Times, Nov. 15-21, p.4, by David Bates] ################################################################## Amnesty International report: So-called "death squads" actually run by Salvadoran army/gov't; target civilians; students, human rights workers, trade unionists, church members, etc. --> [Use GET command (see top of this file for format) with ] --> [AI_REPT ELSALV ; see also: JOYA MARTINEZ for a followup ] [article; U.S. tries to deport Martinez back to El Salvador. ] Other files of interest include: GRNBERET TORTURE Two accounts of US 'aid' to El Salvador DEATHSQD ES_US ES Death Squads: a pattern of US complicity BEHIND DEATHSQD Behind The Death Squads in ES HRCOMM ELSALV A. Cockburn on the Salv. Hum. Rights Commission BRENDA HUBBARD police terrorize COMADRES(mthrs of pol prisoners) ================================= To get a file named FILE NAME from the archiver (all file names are two words separated by a space), one sends the 1-line message GET FILE NAME ACTIV-L to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET ================================= ############################################################### # Harel Barzilai for Activists Mailing List (AML) # ################################################################ { For more info about ACTIV-L or PeaceNet's brochure send } { inquiries to harel@dartmouth.edu / mathrich@umcvmb.bitnet } To join AML, just send the 1-line message "SUB ACTIV-L " to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET; you should receive a confirmation message within 2 days. Alternate address: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU Qs/problems: Rich Winkel, MATHRICH@UMCVMB.["MISSOURI.EDU" or "BITNET"]