Eideard

Mothers and families of El Salvador’s assassinated, disappeared 40,000 citizens
Mike Goldwater photo

An immigration judge in Florida has cleared the way for the deportation from the United States of Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, a former defense minister of El Salvador, finding that he assisted in acts of torture and murder committed by soldiers under his command during the civil war there, including several notorious killings of Americans.

The decision by Judge James Grim of immigration court in Orlando is the first time that federal immigration prosecutors have established that a top-ranking foreign military commander can be deported based on human rights violations under a law passed in 2004, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intended to bar human rights violators from coming to or living in the United States.

Judge Grim found that General Vides assisted in the killings of four American churchwomen on a rural road in El Salvador in 1980, a crime that caused shock there and in Washington and presaged the bloody violence that would engulf the Central American nation for the next decade. The immigration judge’s ruling is the first time General Vides has been held responsible for those deaths in a court of law.

Five soldiers from the Salvadoran National Guard were eventually convicted of the killings and served long prison sentences. General Vides was the commander of the National Guard at the time of the murders.

The effort by Department of Homeland Security officials to seek the deportation of General Vides, who was El Salvador’s defense minister from 1983 to 1989, is a turnabout in American foreign policy. He was a close ally of Washington throughout the war against leftist guerrillas in the 1980s, and was embraced as a reformer despite rampant rights violations by the armed forces under his command.

Judge Grim also determined that General Vides had assisted in the torture of two Salvadorans, Juan Romagoza and Daniel Alvarado, who testified against him in hearings last spring in the immigration court in Orlando.

“This is the first case where the Department of Homeland Security has taken this relatively new law and applied it to the highest military commander of their country to seek their removal,” said Carolyn Patty Blum, senior legal adviser for the Center for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit legal group in San Francisco that represented several torture victims in the case. She called the decision “hugely significant” for future efforts to bring immigration cases for human rights abuses against the highest-level military commanders and government officials.

Republicans and Democrats alike have always justified the Murder, Incorporated style of American foreign policy as expedient during the Cold War. The ending of the Cold War has done nothing to change the style and substance of those policies. And, frankly, this case is surprising in its challenge to established strategy.

They could recall Dick Cheney, secretary of War under Bush the Elder – who declared no involvement of the United States or Salvadoran political thugs in any of these murders.

Logan, Ohio — A man repeatedly shot his adult son and two sisters-in-law in his living room, killing them in front of his terminally ill wife, then fatally shot himself on the front porch as family tension about the cancer-stricken woman’s care apparently boiled over…

An earlier dispute about whether the woman should have been fed tea and toast or the orange her husband had peeled for her apparently set off the shooter Monday, 63-year-old Paul Gilkey…

The sick woman, 59-year-old Darlene Gilkey, witnessed the shootings from a hospital bed in her living room but wasn’t injured, the sheriff said. The family friction escalated into violence in the evening when Paul Gilkey went to a bedroom, retrieved a semiautomatic handgun and began threatening relatives, North said…

Gilkey, known as David or Dave because he went by his middle name, served a decade in prison beginning in 1974 for killing a man in Athens County in May of that year, according to court records. He also had a 1986 arrest for felonious assault, according to the sheriff…

Which didn’t keep him from having a gun in the house.

Darlene Gilkey was receiving hospice care through a company in nearby Lancaster, whose chief executive declined to comment Tuesday because of privacy restrictions. Investigators said she was taken to a hospital after the shootings rattled the normally quiet area.

I’m never surprised when people do something crazy and criminal. I am perpetually astounded over the candyass and cowardly politicians who are so cowed by the NRA and nutballs whose guns are grafted replacements for their sexual organs.

RTFA for the details.

To get to Brandon, you have to drive across the Pearl River, a boundary that seems to separate black Mississippi from white.

In the town’s center, a monument stands honoring the confederate soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

This mostly white town in mostly white Rankin County is about a 30-minute drive from Jackson, Mississippi. It’s here in Brandon that some residents say a gang of teenagers expressed their strong racial prejudice — sometimes through violence.

These residents say the teens were friends with and often led by Deryl Dedmon, now 19 and facing capital murder and hate crime charges for the killing of James Anderson, a black man, who died after he was beaten and run over by a truck in Jackson, according to police. Dedmon has pleaded not guilty and his attorney has refused to answer CNN’s repeated requests for comment…

Parents and students who knew Dedmon tell CNN it was widely known that he expressed a hatred for blacks, white people who had black friends, and anyone he thought was gay. And they say he had a history of harassing teens at his high school.

CNN has learned that Department of Justice investigators have uncovered two other possible incidents where groups of white Rankin County teens, including Dedmon, have sought out and attacked a black person.

But police and school officials told CNN that there were no warning signs, no concerns about Dedmon or his friends before James Anderson’s death this summer. Brandon’s Assistant Police Chief Chris Butts described Anderson’s killing as “an isolated incident” that has been blown out of proportion by the media.

RTFA. It’s long. It’s just as I remember a lot of white Mississippi, White Louisiana.

It wasn’t the same in Black or integrated communities. The balance may have changed by now. The results of official racism obviously haven’t.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A suspected leader of the Juarez drug cartel told authorities he had ordered the deaths of about 1,500 people.

Federal police detailed accusations against Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, known as “El Diego,” a day after authorities announced his capture. He was one of the country’s most wanted criminals, with officials offering a reward of 15 million pesos for his arrest…

Acosta is accused of being a leader of the drug gang known as La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, Mexican authorities have said. Eduardo Pequeno told reporters that Acosta “said he ordered the killings of about 1,500 people, mostly in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua’s capital…”

Pequeno…accused Acosta of having connections with some of the border city’s most notorious violence over the past two years, including the 2010 killing of a state prosecutor, a car bombing outside a police station and a massacre at a house party that killed 15 people — most of them students with no ties to organized crime…

The northwestern Mexican state of Chihuahua, which contains the namesake capital city as well as Juarez, has been a hotbed for drug-related violence.

Mexico’s revolutions against foreign rule, against elitist class rule are a dim footnote in history except on celebration days. The ruling PRN instituted a system of strict corruption and payoffs, police departments founded on bribery and kickbacks – that ran on and on for decades. There are no surprises remaining about the depths into which the Mexican government descended into over time.

So, we’re all surprised when it’s difficult to turn things around. When dozens and hundreds are murdered with no more diligence than required by any slaughterhouse – we gasp. But, still, how much help have we offered from our world-class intelligence services when a thug like this has stayed alive on the streets, killing so many for so long?

After taping his father to a chair, 19-year-old Matthew Nellessen and three accomplices allegedly forced the Arlington Heights man to sign over a $100,000 check from his retirement fund.

When 55-year-old George Nellessen warned his son he would report the theft to police, the younger Nellessen reacted violently — pummeling his helpless father with a baseball bat, then stabbing him in the neck with a steak knife, Cook County prosecutors said Monday…

After the killing, Matthew Nellessen later tried unsuccessfully to cash the check, then made “numerous” bank withdrawals using his father’s debit card, McCarthy said. He ultimately returned to the family’s Arlington Heights home where his father’s lifeless body still sat tied to a chair, authorities said.

George Nellessen’s body wasn’t discovered until two days after his death when a friend came to the house to check on him after co-workers became concerned that he had missed work, prosecutor Maria McCarthy said during the younger Nellessen’s bond hearing.

Judge Kay Hanlon ordered Matthew Nellessen jailed without bond on first-degree murder and armed robbery charges stemming from his father’s killing.

Three other alleged accomplices — all Chicago residents — remained jailed Monday on bonds ranging from $3 million to $1.5 million. Those three men: Marlon Green, 20; Armon Braden, 20; and his younger brother, Azari Braden, 19; also face murder and armed robbery charges in the killing…

The day he was slain, George Nellessen told two co-workers that he planned to kick his son out of the house because he believed the teen was stealing money from him, McCarthy said.

The elder Nellessen, who worked in the tool-and-die industry, told a friend he was afraid of his son.

RTFA for the slimy details. Throw away the key!

A man jailed for killing his married lover is to take his former employers to tribunal after he was sacked following his conviction.

Roger Kearney, 57, was found guilty of killing Paula Poolton and hiding her body in the boot of her car near Swanwick station in Hampshire in 2008.

He claims he was unfairly dismissed from his postman job…

Royal Mail said his dismissal was in line with its procedures…”We do not feel that it is right, or in the public interest, for a criminal convicted of such a serious crime to bring an action of this kind…

Kearney, of Sarisbury Green, was convicted of murder in June and jailed for life with a 15-year minimum tariff.

It isn’t just over the fringe benefits is it? Certainly the basics of healthcare are covered for the time he’ll be spending in the slammer.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Somali fighters from the Hizbul Islam group have killed two people and arrested dozens for violating a ban on watching World Cup football matches on television.

Eyewitnesses said masked men from the group raided houses on Sunday and Monday in the Afgoi district, 30 km south of the capital Mogadishu, to make sure their ban stands.

“Hizbul Islam killed two people and arrested 35 others, all World Cup fans,” Ali Yasin Gedi, vice-chairman of the Elman rights group, told Reuters on Tuesday.

“Islamists unexpectedly entered houses in Afgoi district and then fired (at) some people who tried to jump over the wall to escape” he said.

Hizbul Islam and another group al-Shabaab, which are widely seen as al-Qaeda’s proxy in the region, control large swathes of the country and much of the capital.

The groups enforce their own strict interpretation of Islam, routinely banning sport, music and dancing…

Three years of fighting in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation has left 21,000 people dead and forced 1.5 million from their homes. Only small pockets of the capital remain in the hands of a Western-backed government and African Union peacekeepers.

My only suggestions for sorting out gangsters like this – and their pathetic masquerade as religious leaders – comes down to firearms and explosives.

They only achieve recognition as representing Islam among two kinds of idiots: Equally depraved thugs seeking political power – and the teabaggers and other right-wing nutballs who are willing to believe in any ideology that gives them a chance to hate furriners.

A Florida man admitted to reporters that he killed his wife and five “innocent” children, adding that he wants to be executed “right away” so he can be buried with them on Saturday.

Mesac Damas, 32, said he wanted to take his own life, but did not have the courage to go through with it, “because if you kill yourself, you’re not going to heaven.”

Damas made the statements to a Naples Daily News reporter as he was being led into a Haitian police vehicle in Port-au-Prince. Damas was returned to the United States late Tuesday following his capture in Haiti.

Damas faces six counts of premeditated first-degree murder in the deaths of his wife, Guerline Damas, 32; and the couple’s five children — Michzach, 9; Marven, 6; Maven, 5; Megan, 3; and Morgan, 11 months, police have said. The six bodies were found Saturday in the family’s North Naples, Florida, home after relatives called police saying they had not been heard from.

Just another superstitious nutball who knows he has his God’s support for killing everyone near and dear to him.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Patrick Tracy Burris was released from a medium-security prison two months before Cowpens peach farmer Kline Cash was fatally shot, the first of five deaths blamed on the Cherokee County serial killer, according to the North Carolina Department of Corrections.

Burris, 41, was shot to death early Monday in a shootout with Gaston County, N.C., police.

Burris’ death brought to an end the killing spree that began with the June 27 shooting death of Cash, 63. Items taken from Cash’s home were in Burris’ possession.

Authorities said the motive remains a mystery…

Burris was released from Lincoln Correctional Center in Lincolnton, N.C., on April 29, according to prison records. His offenses included being a habitual felon and five counts each of felony breaking and entering and larceny after breaking and entering, records show…

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Reggie Lloyd said he became angry when he saw that Burris’ rap sheet extended about 25 pages and included crimes from Maryland to Florida.

“At some point the criminal justice system is going to need to explain why this individual was out on the street,” Lloyd said. “We owe that to the victims in this case. We owe that to the citizens who lived in terror for days.”

This sounds like American jurisprudence at its typical best. There are three reasons why a dangerous crook is let off from being warehoused separate from human beings:

3. Sheer incompetence sums up local policing and jurisprudence. A lethal combination that is the usual case. Sometimes it’s cheaper for your family to buy the dumb nephew a job in the local sheriff’s office if he can’t cut it in the highway department.

A judge locked up killer Clifton Bloomfield for 195 years, but now the multiple murderer is out–on video–in a movie role he filmed between homicides.

Bloomfield described himself as trustworthy and reliable a year and a half ago when casting director David Córdova was auditioning extras for the Sony Pictures movie ” Felon ” starring Steven Dorff and New Mexico resident Val Kilmer.

And he got the movie role he was seeking playing a convict in a violent prison drama. He already had killed two people, and a month after “Felon” wrapped he resumed his real-life killing spree.

“We’re expecting actors to come to our casting calls,” Córdova told KRQE News 13. “I’m not expecting the real thing to come through. I don’t think anybody else was actually aware that we had cast a mass murderer on the film.”

Córdova says he can’t afford to background check the thousands of background actors he uses but he wishes he could.

Now serving five life sentences Bloomfield won’t be auditioning for any more movies after being cast in the permanent role of a prison inmate.

Unless, of course, someone in the prison system does something really stupid like let him out by mistake. It happens here.