[Gletkin]

Ex-Ford execs charged in Argentine torture cases
by Michael Warren
Associated Press – Tue, May 21, 2013

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Three former Ford Motor Co. executives were charged Tuesday with crimes against humanity for allegedly targeting Argentine union workers for kidnapping and torture after the country's 1976 military coup.
All three men are now in their 80s. Their case is part of a new wave of prosecutions focusing on corporate support for the dictators who ran Argentina in 1976-1983, and the 150-page indictment written by Judge Alicia Vence reads like a history lesson, going to considerable lengths to explain why their actions constitute crimes against humanity and why it has taken nearly four decades to result in criminal charges.

Factory director Pedro Muller, human resources chief Guillermo Galarraga and security manager Hector Francisco Jesus Sibilla are accused of giving names, ID numbers, pictures and home addresses to security forces who hauled two dozen union workers off the floor of Ford's factory in suburban Buenos Aires to be tortured and interrogated and then sent to military prisons.
All three were ordered to remain under house arrest on bail of about $142,000 each. Galarraga and Sibilla are Argentines and Muller is described in the indictment as a Czech national.

Ford Argentina said in a statement that it was aware of the charges against the men but could not comment because the issue was still under judicial investigation.
"Ford Argentina is not a party to the case but has always kept a collaborative and open attitude with authorities and will provide all available information that may be required to clarify this situation," it said.

The Associated Press left phone messages and sent emails seeking comment from the offices of lawyers for the three former executives, but there was no response.

The judge said the executives sought to eliminate union resistance at Ford's Argentina subsidiary and clearly had inside information about the coming "dirty war" in which so-called subversives would be thrown into clandestine detention centers. She described a key meeting the day after the March 24, 1976, coup in which Galarraga told union leaders to "forget any kind of labor complaints" and all their problems would be resolved.
Witnesses recalled that union leader Juan Carlos Amoroso then asked about talks over money that workers said had been systematically removed from their paychecks. The human resources chief laughed and said, "Amoroso, give my greetings to Camps," the judge wrote, a reference to Gen. Ramon Camps.

At the time, Camps was a little-known figure. Named police chief of Buenos Aires province by the military junta, Camps soon ran a system of clandestine detention centers where thousands of people were taken for torture and summary execution. Camps died in 1994 after being convicted of 73 torture deaths and other crimes so wide-ranging that many of Argentina's current human rights trials involve a network of prisons known as "the Camps circuit." About 13,000 people were kidnapped, tortured and disappeared, according to official counts.
"I find it remarkable that the head of human resources at Ford would know information so sensitive such as the function that Camps would develop in the future, something almost impossible to know if the company didn't have a direct and concrete relationship with the military authorities who had overtaken the state institutions of that era," the judge wrote.

Two nights after the meeting inside the Ford factory, a heavily armed group kidnapped Amoroso at home and took him to be beaten and interrogated, according to the indictment. Other Ford union workers were bound, with bags over their heads, and beaten inside a dining area next to the factory's soccer fields, then hauled away to jails for more torture. Some were subjected to electric shocks; others were stripped naked and injured with power tools or made to undergo false executions as interrogators sought information about union leaders' whereabouts.

The indictment also says that when two of the victims' spouses went to authorities seeking information on their missing husbands, a colonel showed them a list of workers' names on a Ford company letterhead and said it was the company, not the military, that wanted the men taken away.
The former president of Ford Motors Argentina, Nicolas Courard, would have been charged as well if he hadn't died in Chile in 1989, the judge wrote.

About 5,000 workers were employed at the time by the Ford factory in suburban General Pacheco, producing the Falcon, a car that became a symbol of state terror because it was often used by military and police squads to carry off "subversives" and move them between secret detention centers.
The victims in this case include Pedro Troiani, Carlos Gareis, Jorge Constanzo, Marcelino Reposi, Adolfo Sanchez, Francisco Perrotta, Juan Carlos Ballestero, Pastor Murua, Ruben Manzano, Juan Carlos Amoroso, Fernando Groisman, Luciano Bocco, Juan Carlos Conti, Ricardo Avalos, Vicente Portillo, Carlos Propato, Luis Degiusti, Eduardo Pulega, Hugo Nunez, Ruben Traverso, Raimundo Robledo, Carlos Chitarroni, Roberto Cantelo and Hector Subaran.
Their treatment was investigated soon after the return of democracy in 1983, but the crimes later fell under a general amnesty that wasn't overturned by Argentina's Supreme Court until a decade ago. The case has developed since then and only now is coming to trial.
___

Associated Press writer Almudena Calatrava contributed to this report.

Interesting....I wonder how Ford itself escaped prosecution.

[Social_Critic]

A corporation isn't liable for criminal prosecution if its employees carry out illegal acts. This is the general rule. If the illegal act is employee to employee and this is repetitive or it's shown to be because company officers ordered it, then it's possible they may be liable. But in this case I doubt this was the case - I just don't see a USA based company officer in Michigan giving the go ahead to have those union workers picked up. There's another issue, if the names were given expecting the culprits would be prosecuted but not murdered then there's no case anyway.

[Rainbow Crow]

I would think that Ford would be liable for damages but you can't really put a corporation in jail, only the people who are a part of it. I have a feeling these guys will be dead of old age before this has finished up.

[work-in-progress]

A corporation isn't liable for criminal prosecution if its employees carry out illegal acts. This is the general rule. If the illegal act is employee to employee and this is repetitive or it's shown to be because company officers ordered it, then it's possible they may be liable.

Except when the corporations are powerful enough to control all of the levers of power within the state, then the directors have no fear of criminal prosecutions....which is I suspect, your primary goal and why you are so adamant about stamping out any populist movements and governments that threaten the power of the corporation!

[Social_Critic]

It would behoove you to express your own ideas, if you have any, rather than expressing what you think are mine. Learn to articulate your points coherently, and focus. If you don't, you will remain a work in progress stuck in phase I.

[work-in-progress]

It would behoove you to express your own ideas, if you have any, rather than expressing what you think are mine. Learn to articulate your points coherently, and focus. If you don't, you will remain a work in progress stuck in phase I.

I will remain a work in progress as long as necessary!

One thing I tire of quickly are one side demagogues who only criticize one side of an issue and never the other. I would be more open to criticism of Chavismo and other movements from the left if I saw one of your Latin American threads mention anything about the other side: U.S. imperialism, support for dictators who carry out oppressive economic policies against their people.

For example: among your numerous Latin American threads, I don't see a mention of rigging of the legal system in Guatemala that has allowed war criminal - Gen. Rios Montt to go to his grave a free man. He deserves to die in a similar manner as Mubarek of Egypt, but his successors - installed through CIA manipulation will not let justice prevail. And yet if I listen to propagandists like you, the only crimes in Latin America are from the left!

[jc_]

I actually wish corporations could be prosecuted for actions committed under their reign. Particularly since Citizen United gave them "free speech."

[Social_Critic]

I don't agree corporations should have free speech. But I sure wouldn't want to be accused of murder if an employee breaks the law and has other employees killed unless it is shown I was involved. It's not reasonable.

[work-in-progress]

I actually wish corporations could be prosecuted for actions committed under their reign. Particularly since Citizen United gave them "free speech."

Assuming you live in the U.S., do you support MOVE To AMEND?
Move to Amend's Proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.


That would take care of Citizen's United!

[work-in-progress]

I don't agree corporations should have free speech. But I sure wouldn't want to be accused of murder if an employee breaks the law and has other employees killed unless it is shown I was involved. It's not reasonable.

Did you read the OP? Those Ford execs are being charged because of what THEY did to their own employees; not what their employees did. No one said that an employer should be charged for crimes committed by employees that they are no part of.

Considering we live in the era of too big to fail banks, where even bank execs guilty of laundering drug gang and terrorists' money, cannot be subjected to criminal charges, execs who collaborated with fascist secret police, would face no charges in America.

[jc_]

I was the one who said corporations should be held accountable.

Obviously you can't "put a corporation in jail."

At most you can go after economic damages. The problem is that this is typically done in civil proceedings, is mired in court rooms and jury trials for years, and nothing really ever comes of it. It's simple. Say a corporation kills someone. Have a set minimum that the corporation must pay out of its pocket in restitution. In criminal proceedings. If the corporation was found criminally negligent over something, of course. This would stop employees from conspiring to kill someone in their family and then get paid.

Yes I support Move to Amend.