> OPINION
>
>
> Published Thursday, April 13, 2000, in the Miami Herald
>
> JEAN BRENNER
>
>
> Help Honduras find bodies of disappeared
> U.S. citizens
>
> Sister Jean Brenner is Latin American regional coordinator of the Sisters
> of St. Agnes in Nicaragua.
>
> Today I am joining thousands of others in the United States and elsewhere
> in a fast to close the School of the Americas. The SOA has trained
> hundreds of Latin American military officers, many of whom have engaged in
> repression of their own people, using torture, execution and forced
> disappearances.
>
> I will fast in Honduras while participating in a prayer vigil, Way of the
> Cross for Truth and Justice, commemorating the martyrs and disappeared
> persons of Honduras. U.S. citizens James ``Padre Guadalupe'' Carney (my
> cousin) and David Arturo Baez Cruz -- a Catholic priest and a former Green
> Beret -- disappeared in Honduras in 1983 after entering that country from
> Nicaragua with an armed group of the Revolutionary Party of Central
> American Workers.
>
> Years later, an ex-sergeant of the Honduran army, Florencio Caballero,
> declared that SOA graduates were involved in the priest's disappearance.
> (Caballero lived in political exile in Canada until his death.)
>
> In 1998 the CIA Inspector General admitted that CIA agents in the early
> 1980s knew of a death squad functioning within the Honduran military but
> did not report accurately on its atrocities. In fact, the CIA and the U.S.
> Embassy seriously limited reporting on Honduran human-rights violations,
> thus giving the green light for death-squad activities. This fostered a
> climate of impunity that contributed to the disappearance of the two U.S.
> citizens.
>
> Carney had worked in Honduras for 18 years. His defense of human rights
> and his support of the farmers' organizing efforts resulted in his
> deportation in 1979. In 1983 he returned to Honduras as a chaplain to the
> revolutionary column; the Honduran army captured the group, and Carney
> ``disappeared.''
>
> The Honduran military suggested that he had starved to death in the
> mountains.
>
> But Caballero later told The New York Times (June 5, 1988) that he had
> interrogated Carney and that the priest had been tortured and executed.
>
> Baez Cruz, who had served in the Green Berets (U.S. Army Special Forces)
> before returning to his native Nicaragua, also entered Honduras as an
> advisor to the revolutionary group. He was named in a 1983 telegram from
> the U.S. Southern Command and identified as a member of the group killed
> in action in Honduras. His remains, as Carney's, have never been found.
>
> According to Caballero, three Honduran SOA alumni were involved in Carney's
> disappearance:
>
> Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, then-chief of the Armed Forces, ordered the
> executions of Carney and Dr. Jose Maria Reyes Mata, the column's leader
> (1987 BBC interview).
>
> Lt. Segundo Flores Murillo, a 1978 SOA trainee, interrogated Carney (1987
> testimony in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica).
>
> Ramon Peqa Paz interrogated some members of the captured group (1997
> testimony).
>
> Ironically, before serving in World War II, Carney had received his basic
> training at Ft. Benning, Ga., now the home of the SOA.
>
> I write on behalf of friends and family of the victims (John Patrick
> Carney, brother; Joseph Connolly, brother-in-law, and the Rev. Joseph
> Mulligan, friend of Carney, respectively):
>
> We urge the U.S. Congress to close the SOA.
>
> We urge President Clinton to take an interest in the case of these
> Americans and
> in that of other individuals who also disappeared in Honduras. He can make
> amends, at least partially, to the Honduran people for CIA and embassy
> complicity in gross human-rights violations.
>
> We demand that the U.S. government offer technical assistance to the
> Honduran
> government to find the remains of Carney and Baez Cruz and identify those
> responsible for their disappearances.