Among the 57,000+ SOA alumni from 23 nations whose post-graduate work has generated headlines:
Guatemalan Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, implicated in the torture and killing of rebel commander Efrain Bamaca Velasquez and the murder of U.S. innkeeper Michael DeVine;
Guatemalan Gen. Edgar Godoy Gaitan, accused of ordering the murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang;
Colombian general Farouk Yanine Diaz, arrested in October for the 1987 massacre of 19 merchants accused of being guerrilla sympathizers -- also implicated in a massacre of 20 banana workers in 1988; in the murder of the mayor of Sabana de Torres in 1987; and in paramilitary activities associated with the death squad MAS (Yanine graduated from the SOA in 1969, and returned as a guest speaker there in 1990 and 1991);
Panamanian Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, now serving time in a US prison for cocaine trafficking;
Chilean Col. Manuel Contreas, security chief under the death squad regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who presided over the torture, kidnapping and "disappearance" of tens of thousands of Chilean activists and the car-bombing of former Chilean Defense Minister Orlando Letelier and American citizen Ronni Karpen Moffitt in Washington, D.C.;
Argentine Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri was a principal leader of the Argentinean death squad state and an architect of the "dirty war" which decimated the Argentine left in the 1976-1982 period;
Argentine Gen. Guillermo Suarez Mason ran clandestine detention/torture centers in Buenos Aires; it has been estimated by human rights organizations that Suarez Mason was personally responsible for the deaths of some 6,000 of the 30,000 Argentineans murdered during the "dirty war;"
Haitian Cols. Joseph-Michel François, Phillipe Biamby and Raul Cedras, leaders of the 1991 coup d'etat against the democratic government of Fr. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which led to the murders of more than 3,000 Haitians;
Salvadorean Gen. Roberto "Blowtorch Bob" D'Aubuisson, organizer of infamous death squads and of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Romero. (Other Salvadoran SOA graduates organized the El Mozote massacre of over 900 civilians, and the rape/murders of four U.S. churchwomen, among other atrocities).
Bolivian Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez authorized the torture and executions of countless Bolivians and sheltered Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie (after Banzer's coup, the cocaine trade grew astronomically);
Guatemalan Gen. José Efrain Rios Montt, who ran a Guatemalan version of the CIA's "Phoenix Program." During "Plan Victoria 82," and an accessory program, "Fusiles y Frijoles" ("guns and beans"), entire Mayan highland villages were wiped off the map and the survivors of these massacres were herded into "strategic hamlets." By July 1982, an estimated 3-10,000 civilians had been murdered -- though much of the credit for this belongs to former Defense Minister Gen. Hector Gramajo, another SOA grad. (Rios Montt is the current President of the Guatemalan Congress);
Honduran General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez (Quote: "Everything you do to destroy a Marxist regime is moral."), who led Battalion 3-16 and created a number of torture centers. By 1984, more than 200 Honduran labor leaders, student activists and opposition politicians had been "disappeared;"
Peruvian Juan Velasco Alvarado, Ecuadorian Guillermo Rodriguez, Argentine Roberto Viola, and Panamanian Omar Torrijos are among the other notorious Latin American dictators who have profited from SOA training.
Numerous other SOA grads, including Mexicans, Peruvians, Nicaraguan contras, and others, have been cited for drug trafficking, political murders, torture, and crimes against human rights. Even more, beyond doubt, have committed crimes for which no legal action has been taken, or ever will be.
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