Article: The Return of Bolivia's Blood-Stained Dictator On Krunoslav Draganovic's most famous protege: excerpt from "The Return of Bolivia's Drug-Stained Dictator," The Consortium, 1997, about the Butcher of Lyons and Ratline beneficiary, Klause Barbie. |
A Latin American ghost from Washington's Cold War past is reappearing this summer. On Aug. 6, [1997] one of South America's most notorious drug-tainted military dictators, Hugo Banzer Suarez, will don Bolivia's presidential sash. That will make him responsible for battling cocaine traffickers in one of the world's top drug-producing nations... ...Amid strikes and political chaos in July 1978, Bolivian Air Force Gen. Juan Pereda Asburn overthrew Banzer, in the name - oddly enough - of saving Bolivia from "international communism"... Two years later, the Bolivian government prepared to indict Banzer on charges of human rights violations and corruption. But Banzer's remarkable luck held out. His friends, coca king Roberto Suarez and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, provided the money and muscle for the "Cocaine Coup." Barbie, in particular, was already deep in Banzer's debt. After World War II, Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyons for his work in Nazi-occupied France, was hired by the US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) to run a spy network of ex-Nazi officers. But French intelligence agents - seeking Barbie's arrest on charges of torture and murder - picked up his scent. The CIC then contacted Dr. Krunoslav Draganovic, a rightist Croatian priest who ran a Vatican "ratline" which helped hundreds of Nazi SS officers escape from Europe. Draganovic arranged papers and transportation for Barbie to flee from Germany to Italy and then to Argentina and Bolivia. When French Nazi hunters were closing in again a quarter century later, Banzer and other Bolivian officers stepped forward as Barbie's protectors. During his 1971-78 dictatorship, Banzer repeatedly rejected French requests for Barbie's extradition. Barbie returned the favor in 1980, recruiting a mercenary army of neo-fascist terrorists, including Italy's Stefano delle Chiaie. |
