PARAGUAY'S EXILED EX-DICTATOR ALFREDO STROESSNER DIES IN BRAZIL.
| Cargo | Alfredo Stroessner - Obituary |
Former Paraguayan dictator Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) died of complications related to pneumonia on Aug. 16 at the age of 93. Paraguay refused him official honors. He was buried outside the nation he ruled for three decades, with his family instead burying him in Brasilia, Brazil, where he had lived in exile for the last 17 years since his 1989 overthrow.
Final escape from prosecution
A staunch US ally, Stroessner made Paraguay a refuge for some Nazi war criminals among the 200,000 Germans he sheltered after World War II, including Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz.
The general described almost all his opponents as Marxist subversives bent on returning the country to political chaos.
His fatal stroke while suffering from pneumonia on Aug. 16 represented his final escape from prosecution. Brazil had not fulfilled repeated extradition requests from its neighbor government. Human rights groups attributed at least 900 cases of murder and forced disappearance and several thousand cases of torture to Stroessner. The failure of the Paraguayan government to obtain extradition meant the ex-general never faced trial for human rights crimes committed under Operation Condor, the plan launched jointly by the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s (see NotiSur, 2001-06-01, 2005-07-01). The operation sought to track down, capture, and eliminate left-wing opponents.
In one instance, a judicial order for Stroessner's extradition in 2004 went unfulfilled, with his lawyer saying at the time that his political-asylum status in Brazil rendered him safe from Paraguayan courts.
He lived his final years in almost total isolation, abandoned by his friends and separated from his wife, Eligia Mora. For years he had watched his family fall apart. In 1993, his younger son Alfredo committed suicide at age 47 by taking an overdose of barbiturates. In 1994, his eldest son Gustavo was divorced by his wife, who alleged physical abuse. Stroessner's daughter, Graciela, was widowed and remarried, and his two daughters-in-law engaged in court battles regarding family property.
Neither the former dictator nor surviving son Gustavo, both wanted men in Paraguay, ever returned home, despite attempts by supporters to pass an amnesty law.
No official honors
Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte said there were no plans to honor him after his death.
With dozens of family members...
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