Torture Training Alleged

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32387, 28 August 1970, Page 13

Torture Training Alleged

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, August 27. A House of Representatives sub - committee will investigate charges that United States advisers have taught torture methods to Latin American police forces.

Mr John Moss (Democrat, California), chairman of the Foreign Operations and Government Information subcommittee, said last night that his panel would conduct a broad inquiry into United States police training programmes in Brazil and Uruguay, as well as other countries round the world.

The inquiry was an outgrowth of the sub-committee’s recent hearings on what was termed inhumane treatment of inmates in so-called tiger cages at Con Son Island prison in South Vietnam, he said. “As a result of the Con Son revelations—which led to the

use of the tiger cells being discontinued—we intend to initiate an inquiry on a broader basis,” Mr Moss said in a telephone interview. A suggestion of United States involvement in police torture in Latin America came yesterday from the Rev. Louis Colonnese, Latin America director of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The State Department last month denied a charge by the International Commission of Jurists that Brazilian police received torture training from United States experts in the Panama Canal Zone. United States officials today again denied that Mr Daniel Mitrione, the United States A.I.D. official and public safety adviser who was found murdered on August 9 after being kidnapped nine days /earlier by Uruguay Tupamaros terrorists, had taught torture techniques. They said that the United States Agency for International Development public safety programme did not condone torture in any way. “Prior to assignment in Uruguay, Mitrione was a

United States internal security expert in Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janiero, Brazil,” Father Colonnese said. “These two cities are areas with extremely high instances of alleged torture of political prisoners by members of the Brazilian secret police and. military.”

He said that information emanating from Latin America through non-govern-mental channels has “caused many ’ concerned Americans to speculate concerning the United States Government’s possible complicity in such tortures.”

In Uruguay, he said, a legislative investigatory commission published a report recently saying torture of prisoners was “a normal, frequent and habitual occurrence" in Uruguay.

“‘The report cited 12 types of torture used by police, including beatings, electric shocks, daily use of psychological torture, and inhuman treatment of pregnant women held as reprisals against relatives.

“This is the type of police force which Mitrione was advising,” the report said.