Similarly, Human Rights Watch pointed out that " the Contras systematically engage in violent abuses ... so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal means of waging war " in a 1989 report.

Despite the clear electoral victory for the Sandinistas, the Contras continued their violent attacks on both state and civilian targets, until 1989.

In August 1989, the month that campaigning began, the Contras redeployed 8, 000 troops into Nicaragua, after a funding boost from Washington, becoming in effect the armed wing of the UNO, carrying out a violent campaign of intimidation.

It reversed ex-President Jimmy Carter's official condemnation of the Argentine junta for human rights abuses and allowed the CIA to collaborate with Argentine intelligence in funding the Contras.

Initially, Obando y Bravo had promised to the public that if human rights abuses on the part of the Contras were verifiably reported, he would denounce them.

There is no clear evidence that the United States actually exercised such a degree of control as to justify treating the contras as acting on its behalf ... Having reached the above conclusion, the Court takes the view that the Contras remain responsible for their acts, in particular the alleged violations by them of humanitarian law.

Although independent and often at conflict with each other, these guerrilla bands — along with a few others — all became generally known as " Contras " ( short for "", en.

Together, the members of these groups were generally called Contras.

The CIIR report also questioned the independence of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, referring to an article in the Washington Post which claims that the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization funded by the US government, allocated a concession of US $ 50, 000 for assistance in the translation and distribution outside Nicaragua of its monthly report, and that these funds were administered by Prodemca, a US-based organization which later published full-page adverisments in the Washington Post and New York Times supporting military aid to the Contras.

Despite these pressures, Seal went ahead and testified the pictures taken during the trip showed Sandinista officials in NIcaragua brokering a cocaine deal with members of Colombia's Medellín Cartel, One month after Seal's death on March 16, 1986, President Reagan showed one of the photographs Seal took on national television, to bolster Congressional support for the Contras, He suggested that a top ranking Sandinista official was involved in drug smuggling.

Regarding human rights violations by the Contras, " The Court has to determine whether the relationship of the contras to the United States Government was such that it would be right to equate the Contras, for legal purposes, with an organ of the United States Government, or as acting on behalf of that Government.

The American overthrow of the Hudson Austin government in Grenada in 1983 can also be viewed in the same light, as can the U. S. support of the Contras insurgency in Nicaragua ( leading to the Iran-Contra Affair ) and the United States embargo against Cuba.

It was suggested ( in RTP1 TV-Programme Prós e Contras, in March 2008 ), that one of the reasons for the weak vote could be the Portuguese were reluctant to elect any President for more than 2 terms ( only allowed by the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 if non-consecutive ).

Ronald Reagan is credited with increasing spending on national defense and diplomacy which contributed to the end of the Cold War, deploying U. S. Pershing II missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet stationing of SS-20 missiles near Europe, negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty ( INF ) to substantially reduce nuclear arms and initiating negotiations with the Soviet Union for the treaty that would later be known as START I, proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, a controversial plan to develop a missile defense system, re-appointing monetarists Paul Volcker and ( later ) Alan Greenspan to be chairmen of the Federal Reserve, ending the high inflation that damaged the economy under his predecessors Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, lowering tax rates significantly ( under Reagan, the top personal tax bracket dropped from 70 % to 28 % in 7 years ) and leading a major reform of the tax system, providing arms and other support to anti-communist groups such as the Contras and the mujahideen, selling arms to foreign allies such as Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq ( see Iran – Iraq War ), greatly escalating the " war on drugs " with his policies and Nancy Reagan's " Just Say No " campaign, ordering the April 14, 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for an April 5 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by U. S. servicemen, in which the Libyan government was deemed complicit, and signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese American Internment during World War II.

The S / LPD said it helped write an anti-Sandinista column for the Wall Street Journal that ran two days earlier ; assisted in a " positive piece " on the Contras by Fred Francis that aired the night before on NBC ; wrote op-eds for the Washington Post and New York Times that would run with the bylines of Contra leaders ; arranged an extensive media tour for a Contra leader " through a cut-out " ( to hide the S / LPD's role ); and prepared to leak a State Department cable that would embarrass the Sandinistas: " Do not be surprised if this cable somehow hits the evening news.

Jalapa, which is located on the border of Honduras, was the location of two failed attempts of the CIA funded Contras to overthrow the city and install a provisional government, in late 1982 and December 1983, in which the CIA informed the contras would be immediately recognized by the United States Government.

In 1987 and 1988, President Reagan was furious at what he felt to be House Speaker Jim Wright's " intrusion " into the negotiations between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Contras for a cease-fire in the long civil war.

He defended his actions by stating that he believed in the goal of aiding the Contras, whom he saw as freedom fighters, and said that he viewed the Iran-Contra scheme as a " neat idea.

* 1985 – Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and vows to continue the transformation to socialism and alliance with the Soviet Union and Cuba ; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government.

The Contras were soon under the control of Nicaraguan business elites who opposed Sandinista policies to seize their assets.

Subsequent agreements were designed to reintegrate the Contras and their supporters into Nicaraguan society preparatory in preparation for general elections.

The ICJ held that the U. S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors.

The song chronicles the history of the Sandinistas, as well as their conflict with the Contras, and reflects an optimistic hope for the future of Nicaragua.

The US intelligence agencies used BCCI to funnel drug money to Afghan Mujahideen in their fight against Soviet invasion and to insurgents such as Nicaraguan Contras.

The efforts to provide arms for hostages eventually became connected, through the transfer of funds made with arms sales, with the NSC staff's ardent support for the Nicaraguan " Contras " in their civil war against the left-wing government of Nicaragua.

In the dirtiest of Latin America ’ s dirty wars, their faith in America ’ s mission justified atrocities in the name of liberty .” Grandin examined the behaviour of the U. S. backed-contras and found evidence that it was particularly inhumane and vicious: " In Nicaragua, the U. S .- backed Contras decapitated, castrated, and otherwise mutilated civilians and foreign aid workers.

Perpich opposed the Reagan proxy war against Nicaragua in the 1980's and was one of several governors who objected to sending their state national guard units to train in US bases in Honduras, where the US backed Contras were based.

He helped word a secret 1983 presidential " finding " authorizing support for the Contras, as the Nicaraguan rebels were known, and met regularly with Honduran military officials to win and retain their backing for the covert action.

In fact, the Contras received their name precisely because they were counterrevolutionaries.

The main reasons cited for their renewed desire for independence are serious economic problems damaging their traditional fishing industry and the recent election of Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua whom many of them fought against during the Nicaraguan Civil War ( as Contras ).

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua.

For example, by secretly funding the secret war of the militarily-defeated, right-wing Contras against the left-wing Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which led to the Iran-Contra Affair, wherein the Reagan Administration sold American weapons to US enemy Iran to arm the Contras with Warsaw Pact weapons, and their consequent drug-dealing in American cities.

Expatriates of the previous Military and Liberal governments were allowed to return to Honduras, with no risk to their lives, and the irregular forces of the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries, the Contras, were required to leave Honduras in April 1990 after intense negotiations.

The Reagan administration gave varying degrees of support to anti-Communist dictatorships, including those in Guatemala ( to 1985 ), the Philippines ( to 1986 ), and Argentina ( to 1983 ), and armed the mujahideen in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, UNITA during the Angolan Civil War, and the Contras during the Nicaraguan Revolution as a means of ending ( or preventing ) Communist rule in those countries.

After the U. S. Congress prohibited federal funding of the Contras in 1983, the Reagan administration continued to back the Contras by raising money from foreign allies and covertly selling arms to Iran ( then engaged in a vicious war with Iraq ), and channelling the proceeds to the Contras ( see the Iran-Contra Affair ).

During the 1980s Argüello briefly fought with the Contras in his native Nicaragua, but after a few months in the jungle he retired from the war.

The Contras became " a campesino movement with its own leadership " ( Luis Carrion ); they had " a large social base in the countryside " ( Orlando Nunez ); " the integration of thousands of peasants into the counterrevolutionary army " was provoked by " the policies, limitations and errors of Sandinismo " ( Alejandro Bendana ); " many landless peasants went to war " to avoid the state collectives, and Contra commanders " were small farmers, many of them without any ties to Somocismo, who had supplanted the former National Guard officers " ( Sergio Ramirez ).

In 2001 Joan Kruckewitt, an American journalist who lived in Nicaragua from 1983 to 1991 and covered the war between the Sandinistas and the Contras for ABC Radio wrote a book The Death of Ben Linder ( Seven Stories Press 2001 ) giving a more sympathetic portrait of Linder's life, work, and death.

The concurrent civil war, waged between the FSLN and the Contras, was one of the proxy wars in the Cold War.

Upon the conclusion of the civil war, 7, 500 Guardsmen were taken prisoner – with many former Guards suspected of violating human rights being held in detention by the Sandinistas –, while another 4, 500 officers and enlisted men fled to neighbouring Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala to form the nucleus an armed opposition force to the new Nicaraguan government, which would later become known as the Contras

For example, on March 27, 1986, in arguing against United States aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, Kerry made a speech to the Senate that, among other things, touched on the Vietnam war:

The aircraft were then searched by the Brazilian authorities: instead of medical supplies – as quoted in the transport documentation – the crate of the first of 17 Aero L-39 Albatros light training and attack aircraft bound for Nicaragua together with arms and parachutes, to support the country's war against US-backed Contras were found.

Summarised, the main findings showed that " Using the Contras as a front, and against international law, and US law, weapons were sold, using Israel as intermediaries, to Iran, during the brutal Iran-Iraq war.