Editing Roberto D'Aubuisson (section)

== Death squads ==


[[File:Sansalvador-1981.jpg|thumb|right|220px|Death squad victims in San Salvador, 1981]]

D'Aubuisson involved himself in [[Death squads in El Salvador|death squad]] activity while in the military, and he became associated with the second death squad to emerge in El Salvador in the mid-1970s, called the White Warriors Union.{{citation needed|date=September 2023}} In October 1979, after a group of progressive officers deposed the government of [[Carlos Humberto Romero]] in a [[1979 Salvadoran coup d'état|bloodless coup d'état]] and established the [[Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador|Revolutionary Government Junta]] (JRG, 1979–1982), D'Aubuisson was forced out of military service for his death squad connections, although he continued working for senior military commanders secretly. D'Aubuisson was regularly featured on Salvadoran television denouncing alleged traitors and communists, who were then murdered shortly afterwards by death squads.<ref>{{cite book|last1=LeoGrande|first1=William M.|author-link1=William M. LeoGrande|title=Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992|date=1998|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|isbn=0807848573|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xBhSo7CBLMMC|page=49}}</ref>

On 7 May 1980, six weeks after the assassination of [[Óscar Romero]], D'Aubuisson and a group of civilians and soldiers were arrested on a farm. The raiders found weapons and documents identifying D'Aubuisson and the civilians as death squad organizers and financiers, and of planning a coup d'état to depose the JRG.<ref name="nordland"/> D'Aubuisson was soon released from prison, after 8 of the 14 military garrison commanders voted for his release, overruling the JRG.<ref>{{cite book|last1=LeoGrande|first1=William M.|title=Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–199 |date=1998|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|location=Chapel Hill, NC|isbn=0807848573|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xBhSo7CBLMMC|page=47}}</ref>

His opposition to the JRG gave him international infamy. In August 1981, ''[[The Washington Post]]'' reported that D'Aubuisson "openly talked of the need to kill 200,000 to 300,000 people to restore peace to El Salvador". Shortly afterwards, on September 30, he founded ARENA ([[Nationalist Republican Alliance]]), a [[far-right politics|far-right]] political party. D'Aubuisson accumulated much political capital among Salvadorans for his anti-[[leftist]] stridency and for his reputation as an effective [[counter-insurgency]] strategist. He often accused the JRG of being a [[Marxism|Marxist]] threat to El Salvador.<ref name="jenkins">Loren Jenkins, "El Salvador," ''The Washington Post'', 16 August 1981, ''Washington Post Magazine'', p. 10.</ref>

He praised Hitler to [[West Germany|West German]] journalists, out of belief in the [[Jewish Bolshevism]] conspiracy: "You Germans were very intelligent. You realized that the [[Jews]] were responsible for the spread of Communism and you began to kill them."<ref>{{cite news| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1984/07/01/daubuisson-who-me/7a20c778-1f3b-4105-b643-8441b3fb2fa5/| title = D'AUBUISSON Who, Me? - The Washington Post| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]}}</ref> He also asked every [[Jesuit]] be murdered as instruments of Communism and threatened to kill [[James Richard Cheek]], a [[State Department]] official under Carter.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Bello|first1=Walden|last2=Herman|first2=Edward S.|date=1984|title=U.S.-Sponsored Elections in El Salvador and the Philippines|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40208969|journal=World Policy Journal|volume=1|issue=4|pages=851–869|jstor=40208969|issn=0740-2775}}</ref>