Contras Resist Rights Probe, Officials Say

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras —  High-ranking contra commanders have been blocking the work of a human rights office that was established by the U.S. Congress to monitor the Nicaraguan rebels as a condition for U.S. aid, according to human rights officials and other sources.

The $100 million in aid is being given to the contras in this fiscal year.

Marta Patricia Baltodano, director of the U.S.-funded Nicaraguan Assn. for Human Rights, said Saturday that some contra commanders feel “threatened” by her investigators and have tried to restrict their access to information and to guerrilla combatants.

‘Threatens Their Power’

“They (the commanders) are a power structure,” Baltodano said. “We enter and find things that are incorrect and denounce them, and that threatens their power.”

“They have told our delegates that they are destroying the organization and that I don’t care whether they win or lose the war” against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, she said.

A source familiar with the contras said that Baltodano’s organization has built up trust among the rebel rank and file. The source, asking not to be identified, said Baltodano has become an informal ombudsman for disaffected contras, particularly for those who are former Sandinistas and sometimes at odds with those who are veterans of Nicaragua’s old National Guard.

Baltodano said the commanders’ animosity also stems from the fact that her office is looking into human rights cases that date back to 1985. She said the commanders believe she should investigate allegations of abuses made only after October, 1986, when the $100-million aid package was signed into law.

The commanders appear unwilling to have combatants whom they regard as effective fighters investigated for human rights abuses and to risk having them taken out of action, she said.

Evicted From Headquarters

After a series of run-ins between the commanders and human rights workers earlier this month, contra military chief Enrique Bermudez evicted the human rights organization from its bamboo-and-plastic tent at rebel headquarters, where it had been operating since January, according to several contra and human rights sources.

Bermudez also expelled the organization’s psychologist, who had been working with more than 70 Sandinista prisoners of war held near the contra base, the sources said.

Bermudez reportedly agreed to let the rights workers return to the base after meetings Friday with Baltodano and U.S. officials.

Baltodano said they will go back to the base Monday.

“We are going back to the tent where we were. It is symbolic. If the commanders all saw us thrown out, it is important they see us return,” she said.

Threat to U.S. Aid

Reagan Administration officials worry that any permanent rift between Baltodano and the contras could lead to a cutoff in U.S. aid. Congress approved the current aid package on condition that the rebels commit no human rights abuses, and it earmarked $3 million of the $100 million for the human rights office.

Congress is expected to vote in September on an Administration request for another $105 million for the contras.

“If this human rights structure falls apart, it will be a disaster for the policy,” said a U.S. official, who asked not to be identified.

In an interview Friday night, Bermudez denied that there had been any problem with the human rights workers. If there were any incidents, Bermudez said, they were personal rather than policy.

“We are interested in human rights because, first of all, we want to show that the propaganda against us is false,” Bermudez said.

“We are the only guerrilla force in the world that has accepted this kind of supervision. And we understand that it is a condition of the Congress for maintaining the aid.”

Series of Promises

In addition to letting the human rights workers return to their office at the base, Bermudez reportedly made a series of other promises to support their work, including an offer to meet with them and with rebel commanders to emphasize his personal backing for human rights work.

Baltodano and other sources said that her office’s friction with the commanders came to a head in early May while Bermudez was out of the country. Human rights workers asked the commanders to have their troops bring in several contra collaborators accused of killing four men from San Jose de las Mulas, in Nicaragua’s Jinotega province, last July. The rights workers wanted to question those accused.

Baltodano said one of the commanders agreed to do so but asked her to put the request in writing and then took it to Bermudez, saying that Baltodano was giving written orders. The contra collaborators were not brought in.

Baltodano said the commanders also refused to let her interview a human rights delegate who returned to the base camp from Nicaragua without permission and was detained as a deserter.

More than 70 combatants are designated as human rights delegates who report on their units from inside Nicaragua.

Delegate Threatened

Baltodano said that in one instance last week, a contra commander leaving for the field with his troops threatened the delegate assigned to his unit, frightening him out of the job.

“He told him, ‘You are not going to pass any information that I don’t approve, and you are going to march at the head of the troops,’ ” Baltodano said.

Baltodano said the commanders have also denied her workers access to any contra detainees without prior permission, which she believes she should not need.

She declined to give names of any of the commanders who she said were impeding her office’s investigations. She said that several commanders have shown support for her efforts but that they are all out in the field.

The commanders at the base complained to Bermudez about the human rights workers when he returned from a trip to Miami on rebel business. Bermudez then expelled the workers from the base on May 15.

Ordered to Leave

“When Enrique came back, he said we’re not going to put up with these people any more,” Carlos Icaza, a contra legal adviser, said. “He told them to leave and that there was going to be a new system of communication.”

Icaza, who agrees with the commanders that human rights workers overstepped their bounds, said Bermudez moved their office outside of central headquarters and said that if the workers wanted to enter the base in the future they could ask for permission at the gate.

When the office was moved, Baltodano pulled all her workers out of the base.

Icaza said the human rights workers were insufficiently trained and ignored proper military channels. He agreed with the commanders that the office was investigating disciplinary issues that should be handled by the military and not as human rights abuses.

“If there was a fight between a commander and some woman and he hit the woman, they say that is a human rights abuse that should be processed,” Icaza said. “But that may have been months earlier, and the woman has already forgiven him. There is a lack of identification of what they should be doing.”

Baltodano said that her office has never investigated such a case.

Case of Captured Civilians

The case she said seems to have most angered the contra leaders occurred in Cuapa, in Nicaragua’s Chontales province, in 1985 and involved a number of captured civilians who were killed.

A previous investigation by Icaza determined that four people were killed in fighting or while trying to escape. But Baltodano says that 12 people were captured during an attack on Cuapa and that as many as six appear to have been murdered by their contra captors.

She said that contra commanders do not want the leader of the contra unit involved to be disciplined because he is a veteran with a proven record on the battlefield. Baltodano said that during their meeting Friday, Bermudez promised to investigate the case and take appropriate action.

Baltodano acknowledged that her office’s expulsion from the base came at the moment when the contras were under pressure from a large-scale Sandinista assault on positions in the Bocay River valley of northern Nicaragua and from the discovery of a ring of Sandinista infiltrators in the contras’ hospital and strategic bases.

She said that Bermudez was conciliatory during his talks with her and agreed to:

-- Set up a new and effective “attorney general’s” office to investigate and prosecute human rights cases. Icaza, the present “attorney general,” said his office was never funded.

-- Open a legal affairs office to act as a liaison between the military and human rights office.

-- Prosecute combatants in outstanding human rights cases, such as those of Cuapa and San Jose de Mulas, and to review the cases of prisoners now held without trial.

-- Make sure that two Mennonite leaders who recently were forcibly recruited into the contra ranks in Honduras are released.

‘Wait to See’

“We are satisfied we have arrived at an agreement,” Baltodano said. “We are going to wait to see if all of this is put into practice. We will go back and try again.”

Baltodano said she felt that, in general, the human rights office has had a positive impact on the contra fighters. She said more than 3,000 contras have undergone a 12- to 24-hour human rights training course on the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war and rules for treatment of civilians, wounded combatants and the Red Cross.

Human rights delegates with guerrilla units received training in identifying abuses and taking testimony, she added.

Baltodano gave this example of “improved consciousness.” When a contra unit this month brought to the base two women it kidnaped from Nicaragua’s Nueva Segovia province, many of the other rebels came to her office to tell human rights workers.

Baltodano said the women were turned over to the human rights workers and that the commander of the unit was detained by Bermudez.