Marie-Monique Robin

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Marie-Monique Robin (1960-) is a French journalist, who was awarded the Albert Londres prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, on organ theft. She also wrote a book and made a film documentary, titled Escadrons de la mort, l'école française ("The Death Squads, the French School"), which investigated ties between the French secret services and Argentine and Chilean counter-parts. In this documentary, she showed that "counter-insurgency" tactics used during the Algerian War (1954-62), and including a massive use of torture, had been taught to Argentine security forces, who used them during the Dirty War in the 1970-80s and for Operation Condor. She received for this investigation the award of "best political documentary of the year" given by the French Senate and personally awarded by Bernard Stasi.[1]

After studying journalism in Strasbourg, she went to Nicaragua and worked in South America as freelance. She went more than 80 times to South America, including 30 times to Cuba. She made reportages on the Colombian guerrillas, and then worked for CAPA agency.

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[edit] Voleurs d'yeux

She made a book and a film about her investigations on organ theft, Voleurs d'yeux (Eyes Thieves) which was shown at the United Nations, who decided to start an investigation on it. However, a man working for the United States Information Agency (USIA), who she would later discovered related to the CIA, tried to convince NGOs to cut relationship with her. She went to interview him in Washington DC, wondering why each affair denounced in the Latin American press was officially denied by the US embassy 48 hours later. This man unsuccessfully tried to convince in Paris the secretary of the Fédération des affaires des droits de l'homme that "Mrs. Robin is a KGB member."[2] The USIA accused her film of being a lie, however, after a period of hardships where she was subjected to various pressions and attacks, she retained the Albert Londres prize. Marie-Monique Robin then quit CAPA to work again as freelance, doing a reportage on Cuba for Thalassa, a French TV show, and on false allegations of pedophilia made on teachers.

[edit] Death squads

On her 2004 book on death squads, Marie-Monique Robin showed how French military officials had taught Argentine counterparts counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture as practiced in Algeria. A 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires instaured a "permanent French military mission", formed of militaries who had fought in the Algerian War (1954-62), and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Army. Robin declared to L'Humanité newspaper: "French have systematized a military technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships".[3]

Roger Trinquier's famous book on counter-insurgency, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, had a very strong influence in South America and elsewhere, including in the School of the Americas. Trinquier was a member of the Cité catholique fundamentalist group, which gathered many former members of the OAS pro-"French Algeria" terrorist group, and opened up a subsidiary in Argentina in the end of the 1950s, where it had an important role in teaching ESMA Navy officers counter-insurgency doctrines, including the systemic use of torture and ideological support.

Head of DINA Manuel Contreras told her that the DST French intelligence agency communicated to the Chilean secret police the name of the refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno). All of these Chileans have been killed. "Of course, this puts in cause the French government, and Giscard d'Estaing, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships."[3]

General Paul Aussaresses also taught US militaries these tactics, used during the Vietnam War. She showed how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly collaborated with the Videla's junta in Argentine and with Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile, while openly receiving at the same time many political refugees who were granted the right of asylum.

Citing Roger Faligot, French journalist and one of the expert on Ireland, Marie-Monique Robin also note that General Frank Kitson's Low Intensity Operations. Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, the "Bible" used by the British Army during the Troubles in Ireland quoted most of all Roger Trinquier, French theorist of counter-insurgency who legitimized the use of torture.

[edit] Screenings of The Battle of Algiers

Further information: The Battle of Algiers (film)

Marie-Monique Robin interviewed two Argentine navy cadets from the infamous ESMA thirty-five years later after a screening of The Battle of Algiers, a 1966 film by Italian communist Gillo Pontecorvo which had been at the time censored in France. The screening was presented by Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1975 who inaugurated the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College with President Arturo Frondizi (Radical Civic Union, UCR, later overthrow for being too moderate). Caggiano, the military chaplain at the time, introduced the film approvingly and added a religiously oriented commentary to it.[4] Anibal Acosta, one of the ESMA cadet interviewed Marie-Monique Robin described the session:

They showed us that film to prepare us for a kind of war very different from the regular war we had entered the Navy School for. They were preparing us for police missions against the civilian population, who became our new enemy.[4]

She also noted that Pentagon officials also visionned on August 27, 2003 Gillo Pontecorvo's film.[5][6]

[edit] Algerian Civil War

Further information: Algerian Civil War

In the conclusion of her book, she also cites the 2003 report by Algeria-Watch titled Algérie, la machine de mort, which stated:

"To conserve their power and their fortunes nurtured by corruption, those who have been called the généraux janviéristes (Generals of January) — Generals Larbi Belkheir, Khaled Nezzar, Mohamed Lamari, Mohamed Mediène, Smaïl Lamari, Kamal Abderrahmane and several others — did not hesitate in triggering against their people a salvage repression, using, at a unpreceded scale in the history of civil wars of the second half of the XXth century, the "secret war" technics theorized by certain French officers during the Algerian War for Independence, from 1954 to 1962: death squads, systemic torture, kidnapping and disappearances, manipulation of the violence of opponents, desinformation and "psychological action", etc".[7][8]

Citing Lounis Aggoun and Jean-Baptiste Rivoire, Françalgérie. Crimes et mensonges d'État (2004),[9] Marie-Monique Robin refers to false flag attacks committed by Algerian death squads formed by secret agents who disguised as Islamist terrorists, including the OJAL created by the DSR security services and the OSSRA (Organisation secrète de sauvegarde de la République algérienne, Secret Organisation of Safeguard of the Algerian Republic) , which recalled "the French Main rouge", a terrorist group during the 1960s which may have been constituted by French secret services, "or the Argentine Triple A.":

After having liquidated tens of opponents, passing as anti-Islamist civils, these pseudo-organisations disappeared in mid-1994. Because at the same moment, the leaders of the DRS preferred to generalise the unfolding and action of death squads also composed of their men, but passing by as Islamist terrorists.[10]

[edit] 2003 Request for the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission and official responses to the film

Green deputies Noël Mamère, Martine Billard and Yves Cochet deposed on September 10, 2003 a request for the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur. Apart of Le Monde, newspapers remained silent about this request.[11] However, deputy Roland Blum, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin, and published in December 2003 a 12 pages report qualified by Robin as the summum of bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the Quai d'Orsay[12][13]

When Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no cooperation between France and the military regimes had occurred.[14]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Algeria Watch
  2. ^ Marie-Monique Robin, grand reporter sous pressions médiatiques, L'Humanité, September 21, 2002 (French)
  3. ^ a b L’exportation de la torture, interview with Marie-Monique Robin in L'Humanité, August 30, 2003 (French)
  4. ^ a b Breaking the silence: the Catholic Church and the "dirty war", Horacio Verbitsky, 28 July 2005, extract from El Silencio transl. in English by Open Democracy
  5. ^ La direction des opérations spéciales du Pentagone organise une projection de « La Bataille d'Alger », Le Monde, September 9, 2003 (French)
  6. ^ The Pentagon's Lessons From Reel Life - 'Battle of Algiers' Resonates in Baghdad, The Washington Post, September 4, 2003 (English)
  7. ^ French: "Pour conserver leur pouvoir et leurs fortunes nourries par la corruption, ceux que l'on a appelés les généraux "janviéristes" - les généraux Larbi Belkheir, Khaled Nezzar, Mohamed Lamari, Mohamed Médiène, Smaïl Lamari, Kamel Abderrahmane et quelques autres - n'ont pas hésité à déchaîner contre leur peuple une répression sauvage, utilisant, à une échelle sans précédent dans l'histoire des guerres civiles de la seconde moitié du xxe siècle, les techniques de "guerre secrète" théorisées par certains officiers français au cours de la guerre d'indépendance algérienne, de 1954 à 1962 : escadrons de la mort, torture systématique, enlèvements et disparitions, manipulation de la violence des opposants, désinformation et "action psychologique", etc."
  8. ^ Algérie : la machine de mort, October 2003, by Salah-Eddine Sidhoum and Algeria-Watch (French)
  9. ^ Lounis Aggoun and Jean-Baptiste Rivoire, Françalgérie. Crimes et mensonges d'État, La Découverte, Paris, 2004
  10. ^ French: . À l'instar de la « Main rouge » française ou de la « Triple A » argentine, ils ont certes créé, fin 1993, l'Organisation des jeunes Algériens libres (OJAL) et l'OSSRA (Organisation secrète de sauvegarde de la République algérienne) : il s'agissait, purement et simplement, de commandos constitués d'hommes de la police politique du régime, le sinistre DRS. Après avoir liquidé des dizaines d'opposants, en se faisant passer pour des civils anti-islamistes, ces pseudo-organisations disparaîtront à la mi-1994. Car au même moment, les chefs du DRS ont préféré généraliser le déploiement et l'action d'escadrons de la mort également composés de leurs hommes, mais se faisant passer pour des terroristes islamistes.
  11. ^ MM. Giscard d'Estaing et Messmer pourraient être entendus sur l'aide aux dictatures sud-américaines, Le Monde, September 25, 2003 (French)
  12. ^ « Série B. Amérique 1952-1963. Sous-série : Argentine, n° 74. Cotes : 18.6.1. mars 52-août 63 ».
  13. ^ RAPPORT FAIT AU NOM DE LA COMMISSION DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES SUR LA PROPOSITION DE RÉSOLUTION (n° 1060), tendant à la création d'une commission d'enquête sur le rôle de la France dans le soutien aux régimes militaires d'Amérique latine entre 1973 et 1984, PAR M. ROLAND BLUM, French National Assembly (French)
  14. ^ Argentine : M. de Villepin défend les firmes françaises, Le Monde, February 5, 2003 (French)

[edit] Bibliography

  • Voleurs d’organes. Enquête sur un trafic, Éditions Bayard.
  • Escadrons de la mort, l'école française, de Marie-Monique Robin. 453 pages. La Découverte (15 September 2004). Collection : Cahiers libres. (ISBN 2707141631)
  • Los Escuadrones De La Muerte / The Death Squads, de Marie-Monique Robin. 539 pages. Sudamericana (October 2005). (ISBN 950072684X) (Presentation)
  • Les 100 photos du siècle (Le Chêne/Taschen)
  • Le sixième sens, science et paranormal (Le Chêne).
  • Le Monde selon Monsanto, coédition ARTE éditions / La Découverte 2008 (ISBN 9782847344660). (Presentation)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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