El Salvador's Vice President-Elect, FMLN Comandante Salvador Sanchez Ceren, is seen in this September 15, 2001 video celebrating the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States and issuing statements in approval of the vandalism and burning of the American flag. This after he visited the US Embassy to sign the condolence book.
Highlights of the video follow, with the number corresponding to the time on the video clip:
1:54 Headline in El Diario de Hoy, El Salvador’s largest newspaper: “A march in support of the terrorists.”
2:25 Politicians of all political factions in the National Assembly (unicameral parliament) go to the US embassy to sign a condolence book. Salvador Sanchez Ceren is chief of the FMLN faction of the National Assembly. He and the others express their condolences at the US Embassy, then go to a demonstration to accuse the United States and burn the American flag.
2:43. Salvador Sanchez Ceren: “The Frente we participate in this is a march to condemn the situation that the country is in, against dollarization, against privatization.” (Note: FMLN is the Spanish initials for Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. Farabundo Marti was the founder of the Salvadoran Communist Party. The FMLN calls itself “Frente” or “Front” for short.)
Men in FMLN shirts are shown spray painting vandalism, equating US-backed privatization in El Salvador with terrorism. Salvador Sanchez Ceren defends these actions.
The FMLN issued a communiqué about September 11, proclaiming that world peace is in danger. A US embassy spokeswoman compares it to the rhetoric coming out of Taliban-run Afghanistan.
2:57 Announcer: “Despite the leftist party assuring that its participation was different from those of the supposed students who committed the vandalism on September 15, the spokeswoman of the American Embassy said that an FMLN communique concerning the terrorist attacks has a tone heard only from states like Afghanistan.”
3:17 Newspaper headline “Support for terrorism,” concerning the FMLN protests. I believe the paper is El Diario de Hoy.
3:28 Schafik Handal, head of the FMLN and a member of the National Assembly, speaks about terrorism, blaming the US and Israel, and equating the US preparations to attack the Taliban with the 9/11 attacks: “Terrorism also happens continually at all hours of the day and night by the government of Sharon in Israel against the people of Palestine. The government of the United States at this moment has taken a tolerant position on this, to say at least. All of this is terrorism. And now it’s starting to be carried out over Afghanistan. It’s the same kind of thing.”
4:01. Salvador Sanchez Ceren press quote, defending the “students” who committed vandalism and burned flags at the September 15 protest: “There was no disorder in the protest (in support of the attacks), ask the students.”
4:04. Headline: “That was not the intention.” Text: “For his part, the chief of the FMLN bloc [in the national legislature], Salvador Sanchez Ceren – who participated in the demonstration on Saturday – rejected that there was any disorderliness. ‘What happened was that they made use of the regular characteristics of a demonstration: placards and paint,’ he said.”
4:10. Image of FMLN Legislative letterhead headlined, “World Peace Is In Danger.” The text is not legible on my screen. The sidebar says: “In the lead of the communiqué, the FMLN maintained that the terrorist acts against New York and Washington composed ‘the use of the pretext of the violence of the United States and of anarchic groups.’”
“They [the FMLN] condemned terrorism of all kinds that attack civilian populations and promote economic policies that affect humanity and the [words illegible].”
“In point number three, they [the FMLN] ask the United States to resolve its conflicts through political means and through dialogue, as a sign of political goodwill, and that safeguards social, political and economic tranquility and stability of all peoples.”
4:13: Photo of FMLN leaders on the steps of the National Assembly building in San Salvador. Salvador Sanchez Ceren is seen applauding, standing in the light shirt between the paunchy man in the red vest and the woman in the white blouse. “ANDES” is the teachers’ union front of the FMLN. At right is the FMLN banner.
4:14: Press clip: “The chief of the FMLN faction [in the national assembly], Salvador Sanchez Ceren, says that conflicts should be resolved by the political route and dialogue, in order not to endanger world peace.”
4:21: Press clip with quote from parliamentary FMLN faction leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren: “World peace is in danger. The options are either revenge or promotion of a new order of peace.”
4:25: Announcer commentary: “The position of the Embassy of the United States of America accredited in our country, before the declarations of the FMLN, were delivered by means of a letter in which Ambassador Rose Likins tells Mr. Sanchez Ceren, ‘Concerning the aforementioned, one cannot but be surprised and offended that the Faction [FMLN] decided to compare these mass killings with unspecified ‘economic policies.’”
4:59: Salvadoran President Francisco Flores speaks out in support of the United States: “It’s important to signal that to make declarations that justify acts of terrorism, like the declaration by the FMLN, saying that the terrorism was justified by the brutality or the economic policies of the United States, or even more, making a public act by people of high level in the FMLN, the chief of faction, members of the mayors office of San Salvador, constitutes enormous damage to our country.”
Bush: “You are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Note how even the Democrats gave him a standing ovation.
The FMLN says that if it loses Sunday's presidential election it will denounce El Salvador's democratic process as a fraud.
The effort to discredit any loss is being echoed by FMLN supporters in other countries. Today, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's satellite TV propaganda channel is echoing the FMLN call.
Telesur, the Chavez TV channel modeled after Al Jazeera, is issuing reports denouncing a "dirty campaign" against FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes - this just days after Funes' vice presidential running mate, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, made an identical allegation in an interview with La Prensa Grafica.
FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes is not appearing in public with his pro-Al Qaeda running mate.
Vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a militant who said that Al Qaeda was justified in attacking the United Sates on September 11, 2001, has become so controversial that the FMLN campaign has decided for "strategic" reasons not to have him appear in public with the moderate-looking Funes.
Sanchez Ceren admitted the strategy in an interview with the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Grafica, published March 10. (Click here for a video of the interview, in Spanish)
Known as Leonel Gonzalez during the war when he headed the militant FPL faction of the FMLN, Sanchez Ceren has admitted to killing his own comrades over policy disputes and is unrepentant about his communist ideology and his actions to try to turn El Salvador into a totalitarian revolutionary state. He continues to come under political fire for participating in a September 15, 2001 demonstration accusing the United States of terrorism and justifying Al Qaeda's attacks.
A group of US congressmen led by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) openly sympathizes with the FMLN and has raised no objections to Sanchez Ceren's candidacy or his stated support for terrorism.
El Salvador's largest newspaper has just published a photograph of FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren leading a September 15, 2001 "celebration" of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States.
The montage of three photos, appearing here, appeared yesterday in El Diario de Hoy in San Salvador. The photo on the top left shows a semi-nude FMLN activist in a mask and stars-and-stripes cape marching with the American flag flying upside down. The bottom left photo FMLN militants burning an American flag in front of San Salvador's national cathedral.
In the photo at right, FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, in the light blue shirt, claps and cheers as the American flag burning takes place.
The Salvadoran presidential elections have focused new attention on the FMLN's support for Al Qaeda's attacks on the United States in 2001.
"Four days after 9/11, the FMLN had a march in their capital city to celebrate the attack by Al Qaeda and to burn the American flag," said Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia in a statement on the House floor. "The leader of that march was Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who today is the FMLN's candidate for vice president.
"The FMLN political party in El Salvador supports designated terrorist organizations, such as the FARC [of Colombia], and state sponsors of terror such as Iran and Cuba," said Broun, a former Marine.
American lawmakers are worried that if Salvadorans vote to install a pro-terrorist government, the US will have to invoke existing counterterrorism policies that will have a detrimental effect on the population. El Salvador is a long-standing American ally.
"The FMLN has a long history of hostility towards us," said Broun. "Under current law, the election of a pro-terrorism party in El Salvador would have real consequences. Since the 9/11 attacks, the US has enacted stronger tools to fight terrorism and those who funnel money to support it.
"I want to make clear that these actions would not be punitive; they are not meant to chastise Salvadorans, but the US will not aid sponsors of terrorism," the Georgia lawmaker said. "We have an obligation to protect the US and our citizens against those seeking to do us harm."
The FMLN stands poised to win the presidential election just days before an anniversary relating to the group's cold-blooded murder of two wounded American army officers.
On March 17, 1992, the government of El Salvador took custody of two FMLN operatives for the execution-style murders of LTC David H. Pickett and PFC Earnest Dawson, Jr., after the guerrillas shot down their US Army helicopter. Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Scott died in the crash.
An FBI investigation ascertained that Pickett and Dawson were injured but alive, and that the FMLN murdered them.
According to GlobalSecurity.org, after the FMLN shot down the helicopter, Scott was dead from the crash, Dawson was unconscious, and Pickett was "remarkably conscious." This account says,
"Several local farmers were forced at gunpoint by the rebels to drag the crew out of the helicopter. LTC Pickett asked for some water. The rebels then directed the farmers to go get some water. After the farmers had crossed the ridge line of the hill, the rebels shot PFC Dawson once in the head and then Pickett with two bursts of automatic weapons fire. PFC Dawson was posthumously promoted to Specialist."
The murderers were identified as Ferman Hernandez and Severiano Fuentes, who confessed to the crime. A United Nations commission found that Hernandez gave the orders and that Fuentes carried out the actual murders. Both killers were allowed to go free under the terms of the State Department-brokered peace accords.
The FMLN has never made reparations for the crimes, which took place on January 2, 1991. FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes and vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a former top FMLN commander, have expressed no remorse for the killings and offered no reparations to the United States or to the families.
Many of the Salvadoran gangs plaguing both El Salvador and the United States find their origins in the FMLN from its guerrilla days.
What many people don't know is that the FMLN has been using the gangs inside El Salvador as political muscle for the 2009 presidential campaign.
The Salvadoran press has been reporting it for a long time, and some FMLN people have come forward with complaints. The ARENA party has even made political ads about the problem, as this Spanish-language video shows.
Not only did he order the killings of thousands of Salvadoran civilians who opposed his communist revolution - or the murders of American military personnel in the 1980s. Salvador Sanchez Ceren admits he ordered the killings of hundreds of his own people in the FMLN.
See the political campaign ad aimed at Ceren, who is running as Mauricio Funes' running mate to be become the next vice president of El Salvador.
Readers are welcome to post translations of this video.
FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, one of the five notorious former comandates of the Soviet-backed guerrilla group that killed thousands of civilians in its failed communist revolution of the 1980s, says he'll still resort to armed violence if necessary.
Here are some quotes of Ceren's in this short video, in Spanish.
Admissions of murder and torture by FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren have resulted in a prominent Salvadoran lawyer calling for his withdrawal from the campaign.
This clip, from Salvadoran TV last December, contains the story in Spanish. Readers are invited to post translations and comments.
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We're a group of Salvadorans and Americans concerned with promoting a stable democracy in El Salvador and preserving the freedoms gained there since the victory over the communist FMLN guerrillas in 1992.
FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes is not appearing in public with his pro-Al Qaeda running mate.
El Salvador's largest newspaper has just published a photograph of FMLN vice presidential candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren leading a September 15, 2001 "celebration" of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States.
The Salvadoran presidential elections have focused new attention on the FMLN's support for Al Qaeda's attacks on the United States in 2001.
The FMLN stands poised to win the presidential election just days before an anniversary relating to the group's cold-blooded murder of two wounded American army officers.
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