DEFECTORS DIAGRAM WAYS MANAGUA WOOS SYMPATHY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504570007-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: March 20, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
i Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504570007-7
v1111 rM-62F. WASHINGTON TIMES
Defectors diagram ways
Managua woos sympathy
By James Morrison
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Defectors from the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua say it rou-
tinely manipulates some American
human rights groups whose allega-
tions of guerrilla atrocities are fuel-
ing congressional opposition to U.S.
aid for the rebels.
The defectors, who include for-
mer high-ranking Sandinistas, say
the Nicaraguan government con-
trols the visits of foreign human
rights delegations, plants govern-
ment agents to pose as victims of
rebel atrocities and sometimes com-
mits human rights abuses that are
blamed on the rebels.
Several of the groups, including
the Washington Office on Latin
America (WOLA) and Americas
Watch, are also listed as sympathetic
to Nicaragua's ruling communist
Sandinista Party in a new book,
called the "Big Red Diary," pub-
lished by the London-based Nicara-
gua Solidarity Campaign.
WOLA and Americas Watch re-
presentatives said the listing of their
organizations in the book was unau-
thorized. They also deny that any of
their reports were manipulated by
the Sandinista government.
The Sandinistas financed one hu-
man rights report that was later pre-
sented in Washington as indepen-
dent research, the defectors said.
The influence of the groups,
which recently have focused more
on charges of rebel atrocities than
on government human rights
abuses, was evident in Sunday's
Democratic response to President
Reagan's speech urging $100 million
in military and humanitarian aid for
the rebels.
Tennessee Sen. Jim Sasser, who
delivered the televised Democratic
response, said Sandinista atrocities
"pale beside those of the Contras
which tragically are being subsi-
dized by your tax dollars."
Alvaro Jose Baldizon Aviles, per-
haps the best-known Sandinista de-
fector, told The Washington Times
that the Sandinistas "consider sev-
eral human rights organizations to
be docile and able to be manipulated.
Logically they work best with orga-
nizations that are in solidarity with
the Sandinistas."
A former high-ranking official in
the Interior Ministry, Mr. Baldizon
has told the State Department that
when a delegation wants to visit cer-
tain areas, the police lock up people
who might speak out against the gov-
ernment and frequently send spe-
cial government teams to pose as
victims of rebel abuses.
Interior Ministry agents also in-
filtrate some visiting delegations by
posing as photographers or report-
ers for pro-Sandinista newspapers.
The government agents monitor the
groups' activities, Mr. Baldizon said.
Alberto Gamez Ortega, the for-
mer penal prosecutor and vice min-
ister of justice, said, "The organiza-
tions promoting respect for human
rights, whose representatives come
to Nicaragua in order to investigate
human rights abuses, are admirably
manipulated by the Ministry of Jus-
tice."
Mr. Ortega, who appeared earlier
this week at a White House forum on
Nicaragua, told of his defection and
of Sandinista abuses in a statement
given to the newly established hu-
man rights commission of the
United Nicaraguan Opposition, the
umbrella group of anti-Sandinista
rebels.
Visits of human rights groups are
"scheduled for selected places such
as the Open Structure Penitentiary
System in the agricultural farms or
to certain prisons which show only
what they wish to be known. Visitors
are not shown El Chipote, the punish-
ment cells or the clandestine cells."
Wesley Smith, an independent re-
searcher, said in a new report on
Sandinista abuses, that inmates of El
Chipote, which contains mostly po-
litical prisoners, are severely brutal-
ized, systematically tortured and
kept in tiny, dark punishment cells.
Mr. Ortega also implied that Juan
Mendez, Washington director of
Americas Watch, received special
treatment when he visited the capi-
tal of Managua to investigate human
rights abuses.
Another defector, Mateo Jose
Guerrero, who served as director of
the Sandinista human rights organ-
ization, said that he was ordered to
"take charge" of Mr. Mendez, "pro-
viding him with a car and arranging
his interviews with government en-
tities."
Mr. Mendez said the help he re-
ceived involved only arranging in-
terviews with government officials
so he could bring human rights
abuses to their attention.
Another defector, Bayardo de Je-
sus Payan, former finance officer for
the government human rights com-
mission, testified 'before Congress
last year that he was ordered to pay
the expenses of a human rights team
in 1984 and provide them with office
space.
The report later formed the basis
of a follow-up investigation by
WOLA and the International Human
Rights Law Group and is cited as
evidence of rebel abuses in the latest
WOLA report.
Mr. Payan said the Sandinista gov-
ernment "manages and controls all
contact with the international press
and foreign visitors who come to
Nicaragua, making them believe
that abuses are committed only by
the rebels and that the government
is a model of respect for freedom
and rights of the citizens"
The new WOLA report was con-
ducted by what critics charge is a
pro-Sandinista, quasi-religious
group called Witness For Peace.
Many of the report's researchers
live in Nicaragua.
Seven of the researchers on the
WOLA report were members of a
Witness For Peace team that
claimed it was kidnapped by rebel
forces last year. The peace activists
deliberately sailed boats into a war
zone as a protest and knew before-
hand they were endangering them-
selves, Witness For Peace members
have said in various interviews.
The new report lists their capture
as an example of a rebel atrocity. But
other investigators have revealed
that the stretch of the San Juan
River that divides Nicaragua from
Costa Rica was under Nicaraguan
army control, not rebel control, dur-
ing their voyage.
Alejandro Bolanos, president of
the Nicaraguan Information Center
in St. Charles, Mo., quoted
Sandinista-owned newspapers to
show that the Nicaraguan army had
driven rebels out of the area and that
the point where the protesters were
captured, the Machuca Rapids, had
been "under total and absolute San-
dinista control since early June," two
months before the protest.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504570007-7