SAN SALVADOR, November 11, 2005 (SIEP) “The eagerness to establish the ILEA (International Law Enforcement Academy) in El Salvador is a servile attitude toward the United States,” said Carlos Castaneda, FMLN deputy, in the Faith and Hope program sponsored by Communities of Faith and Life.
“And it obeys,” he went on, “a global strategy of the militarization of the planet which has been intensifying since September 11, 2001, and which is justified by the threat of terrorism. There are already schools of this kind in Hungary, Thailand, the United States, Africa, all over the planet.”
“And in El Salvador we already have the Comalapa Military Base, with an office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, with a large U.S. military presence which reflects the submissive policies of the ARENA government, which has been in power these last years.”
For his part, Dr. Héctor Berríos, coordinator of the Movement for People’s Self-Determination (MAP), said that “various actions” have been carried out “to alert the citizenry about this threat, because we are talking about a new School of the Americas here, a factory of killers.”
“Those responsible for the massacre at El Mozote in 1981 were soldiers trained in the School of the Americas. And today they are going to train judges, prosecutors, and police officers in this International Law Enforcement Academy, and it terrifies us to think what will come out of there.”
He concluded that “the establishment of the ILEA, which President Tony Saca is promoting, constitutes a grave violation of the Constitution of the Republic. He is permitting a foreign government to swallow us up, allowing the U.S. to train soldiers and police officers in the use of torture, forced disappearances of members of the opposition, cruel treatment, etc. It is urgent that we stop this.”