Bauer: FBI Video Links Southern Poverty Law Center to FRC Shooter's Act of Domestic Terrorism

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, citing the release this week of an FBI interrogation video, demanded that the Southern Poverty Law Center stop falsely labeling pro-family Christian ministries as "hate groups." 

Floyd Lee Corkins II plead guilty to shooting a security guard at the Family Research Council and to charges of domestic terrorism.  On a video released this week, Corkins admits to FBI agents that he targeted FRC after seeing it listed as an anti-gay hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website.  

Bauer, president of American Values, served as president of Family Research Council for more than 10 years.  He called the Southern Poverty Law Center's decision to target faith-based ministries that support Biblical values "an offensive and dangerous act, now conclusively linked to domestic terrorism."

"It is ironic that a group that claims the civil rights mantle is so aggressively targeting pro-family, Christian organizations.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a minister," Bauer observed.  "Dr. King argued for equality in society based on the biblical understanding of the value of all life."

Bauer continued, "A domestic terrorist shot a security guard during his attempt to kill men and women at the Family Research Council because of the Southern Poverty Law Center's offensive and defamatory mischaracterization of its work.  That is evidence of the dangerous level of hate created by the left's growing intolerance for traditional values.  The SPLC's credibility should also be on trial as its virtual 'hit list' has led to precisely the kind of intolerance and violence it is supposed to be against."

The FBI video can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgjI3wavx-I&feature=player_embedded

SOURCE American Values

View the original article here

Witness at ex-dictator's trial links Guatemalan president to war crimes

By Mike McDonald

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A former member of Guatemala's armed forces implicated President Otto Perez in civil war atrocities as he testified on Thursday at the genocide trial of ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt.

Hugo Reyes, who was stationed as an army engineer in a violent region of Guatemala under Rios Montt's 1982-1983 rule, said Perez commanded soldiers who burned down homes and shot and killed civilians during the civil war, which pitted leftist insurgents against a series of right-wing governments.

Perez, a retired army general who was elected president in 2011, was also known as major Tito Arias during the civil war and has previously denied involvement in war crimes.

Taking the stand, Reyes said he witnessed the killing of farmers near the village of Nebaj in northwestern Guatemala by troops under the command of Perez and another officer.

"The soldiers under the orders of Major Tito Arias, known as Otto Perez Molina, Francisco Marin, and the officers they were in charge of, and the commander of the company of engineers, coordinated the burning (of homes) and pulling people out so they could execute them," Reyes told the court.

Before Perez took office in 2012, Reuters asked him about testimony linking him to war crimes during the 1960-1996 war which claimed some 200,000 lives. Perez said the allegations were "completely false."

As president, Perez is protected by amnesty granted to public officials and cannot be subpoenaed.

Rios Montt, who left Congress last year, was ordered to stand trial in January when a judge found sufficient evidence linking him to the killing of more than 1,700 indigenous people in a counterinsurgency plan carried out under his command.

Prosecutors allege Rios Montt turned a blind eye as soldiers used rape, torture and arson against leftist rebels and targeted indigenous people in a "scorched earth" offensive that killed at least 1,771 members of the Mayan Ixil group.

Rios Montt, 86, has yet to take the stand in the trial, the first in which a country has prosecuted a former head of state for genocide and crimes against humanity.

(Editing by Dave Graham and Mohammad Zargham)

View the original article here