Costa Rica to stop sending police to US army school

Thursday, May 17th 2007
Reuters

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, May 16 (Reuters) - Costa Rican President Oscar Arias vowed on Wednesday to stop sending police to train at a U.S. facility criticized for a history of producing soldiers who went on to violate human rights.

Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, made the promise after talks with Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a U.S. activist priest who has campaigned since 1990 for the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School for the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Though U.S. defense officials closed the original school, a Latin American military training facility, in 2000 and reopened it a year later under the new name and with a new curriculum, critics say the change was purely cosmetic.

Costa Rica currently has three policemen at the center.

"We agreed that when the courses end for the three policemen we are not going to send any more," Arias said.

Costa Rica has no army but has sent some 2,600 police officers over the years to be trained at the school, which critics say trained dictators, torturers and assassins.

"This is going to give a lot of energy and hope to our movement," Bourgeois said of Arias's decision.

The school today focuses on issues like disaster relief and combating terrorism yet critics see it haunted by past alumni such as former military leaders Manuel Noriega of Panama and Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina and Salvadoran death squad organizer Roberto D'Aubuisson.

Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to stop civil wars in Central America.