A fact finding mission of 1985 – sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Group and the Washington Office on Latin America, and carried out independently of any Nicaraguan government interference or direction-found that the contras with some frequency deliberately targeted Nicaraguan citizens in acts of terroristic violence.

Yet, U. S. interventionism reached further than favoring some contras while neutralizing others.

A further 72 graves were reported as being found, containing bodies of people, the majority of whom were believed to have been executed by agents of the state and some also by the contras.

These large scale raids mainly became possible as the contras were able to use US-provided Redeye missiles against Sandinista Mi-24 helicopter gunships, which had been supplied by the Soviets.

to persuade the contras to use terror in a less random, more calculated fashion .” Whether they became more calculated regarding their deeds of terror is unclear, but they remained horrific: “ Linder was out with his crew, knee deep in a stream, measuring the water flow to see whether it was suitable to power a plant for San José de Bocay.

But the most significant unofficial funding for the contras came in the form of secret payments from conservative Third World governments solicited by senior American officials.

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.

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.

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.

Similarly, the Catholic Institute for International Relations ( CIIR, now known as " Progressio "), a human rights organization which identifies itself with liberation theology, had summarized Contra operating procedures in their 1987 human rights report: " The record of the contras in the field, as opposed to their official professions of democratic faith, is one of consistent and bloody abuse of human rights, of murder, torture, mutilation, rape, arson, destruction and kidnapping.

The Bush administration is responsible for these abuses, not only because the contras are, for all practical purposes, a U. S. force, but also because the Bush administration has continued to minimize and deny these violations, and has refused to investigate them seriously.

The Court considers that the evidence available to it is insufficient to demonstrate the total dependence of the contras on United States aid.

The effort to support the contras was one component of the Reagan Doctrine, which called for providing military support to movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments.

During the war against the Sandinista government, the contras carried out many violations of human rights, and evidence suggests that these were systematically committed as an element of warfare strategy.

These deliberate acts of violence against civilians were acknowledged by the CIA as early as late 1983, when Duane Clarridge, Latin America division chief of the CIA ’ s Directorate for Operations, reported in a secret briefing to the Senate subcommittee that his contras had murdered " civilians and Sandinista officials in the provinces, as well as heads of cooperatives, nurses, doctors and judges.

Human Rights Watch, the umbrella organization of Americas Watch, replied to these allegations: " Almost invariably, U. S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U. S .- supported insurgents, known as the contras ....

Almost invariably, U. S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U. S .- supported insurgents, known as the contras.

In Nicaragua, the Contra War ended after the Sandinista government, facing military and political pressure, agreed to new elections, in which the contras ' political wing participated, in 1990.

In Nicaragua, Johns visited regularly with the Nicaraguan contras, and he made several ultimately successful arguments in support of U. S. aid to the contras, including that Soviet military support for the Marxist Sandinista government and a neighboring Marxist insurgency in El Salvador ( the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN ) represented Soviet violations of the Monroe Doctrine and that U. S. support for the contras was justified under the doctrine's self-defense provisions.

U. S. aid for the contras was authorized and the Sandinista government, under contra military and global political pressure, ultimately agreed to hold the free and fair elections the contras sought, which the Sandinistas then lost in one of several global indications that the Cold War was dissolving.

On 4 January 1982, Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 ( NSDD-17 ), giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support the contras with $ 19 million in military aid.

At this time, it only outlawed U. S. assistance to the contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government, while allowing assistance for other purposes.

During the time congress blocked funding for the contras, the Reagan government engaged in a campaign to alter public opinion and change the vote in congress on contra aid.

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.

It disclosed a " distinct pattern " of abuses by the contras, including: " attacks on purely civilian targets resulting in the killing of unarmed men, woman, children and the elderly ; – premeditated acts of brutality including rapes, beatings, mutilations and torture ; – and individual and mass kidnappings of civilians for the purpose of forced recruitment into the Contra forces and the creation of a hostage refugee population in Honduras ; – assaults on economic and social targets such as farms, cooperatives and on vehicles carrying volunteer coffee harvesters ; – intimidation of civilians who participate or cooperate in government or community programs such as distribution of subsidized food products, education and local self-defense militias ; – and kidnapping, intimidation, and even murder of religious leaders who support the government, including priests and clergy-trained lay pastors.

One such grave contained 75 corpses of peasants who were believed to have been executed in 1984 by government security forces pretending to be members of the contras.

** The presidents of five Central American countries agree that the U. S .- backed contras fighting the government of Nicaragua should be disbanded and evicted from their bases in Honduras by December 5.

government ( the anti-Sandinista guerrillas known as the “ contras ”) led to a prohibition on such assistance in a continuing appropriations bill.

In front of the International Court of Justice, Nicaragua claimed that the contras were altogether a creation of the U. S. This claim was rejected.

However, since the contras failed to win widespread popular support or military victories within Nicaragua, since opinion polls indicated that a majority of the U. S. public was not supportive of the contras, since the Reagan administration lost much of its support regarding its contra policy within Congress after disclosure of CIA mining of Nicaraguan ports, and since a report of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research commissioned by the State Department found Reagan's allegations about Soviet influence in Nicaragua " exaggerated ", Congress cut off all funds for the contras in 1985 by the third Boland Amendment.

Nevertheless, the case for support of the contras continued to be made in Washington, D. C. by both the Reagan administration and the Heritage Foundation, which argued that support for the contras would counter Soviet influence in Nicaragua.

In October 1987, however, the contras staged a successful attack in southern Nicaragua.

With the help of five Central American Presidents, including Ortega, it was agreed that a voluntary demobilization of the contras should start in early December 1989, in order to facilitate free and fair elections in Nicaragua in February 1990 ( even though the Reagan administration had pushed for a delay of contra disbandment ).

* February 28 – President of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega announces a cease-fire with the U. S .- backed contras.

* November 1 – President of Nicaragua ends a cease-fire with U. S .- backed contras that had been in effect since April 1988.

The result was that, in addition to Afghanistan, the Reagan Doctrine was rather quickly applied in Angola and Nicaragua, with the U. S. providing military support to the UNITA movement in Angola and the " contras " in Nicaragua, but without a declaration of war against either country.

Two of her children, Pedro and Cristiana, worked at La Prensa, although Pedro left Nicaragua in 1984 to join the contras.

: dozens of cables in which the Ambassador sought to undermine regional peace efforts such as the Contadora initiative that ultimately won Costa Rican president Oscar Arias a Nobel Prize, as well as multiple reports of meetings and conversations with Honduran military officers who were instrumental in providing logistical support and infrastructure for CIA covert operations in support of the contras against Nicaragua -" our special project " as Negroponte refers to the contra war in the cable traffic.

Other examples include coverage of the Iran-Contra Scandal by only focusing on people in power such as Oliver North but omitting coverage of the civilians killed in Nicaragua as the result of aid to the contras.

The contras were funded by drug trafficking, of which the USA was aware.

Human Rights Watch released a report on the situation in 1989, which stated: " contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners.

One member of the Permanent Commission for Human Rights commented on the Americas Watch report and its chief investigator Juan Mendez: " The Sandinistas are laying the groundwork for a totalitarian society here and yet all Mendez wanted to hear about were abuses by the contras.

By 1986, the contras were besieged by charges of corruption, human-rights abuses and military ineptitude.

With this in mind, Cockburn ’ s claim seems valid: “ The U. S. problem with the contras was that they were by and large the very same group who had been trained by the United States to protect the interests of the Somozas.

“ The contras, it transpired, had been informed only after the fact of what the CIA was doing and were instructed to take credit.

... There were so many people being wounded every day, so many people dying, and it was hard for us to understand the position of the church hierarchy in refusing to condemn the contras.

While the doctrine benefited from strong support from the Reagan administration, the Heritage Foundation and several influential Members of Congress, many votes on critical funding for resistance movements, especially the Nicaraguan contras, were extremely close, making the Reagan Doctrine one of the more contentious American political issues of the late 1980s.