The Catholic Institute for International Relations 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.”
I am not very informed about the Contras. If you have anything to the contrary, please submit them. But after you’ve replied in detail to my earlier post.
I remember the period very well. I have actually met some of the Contra leaders. They covered a wide range of viewpoints. Many were prisoners under the Somoza regime (which, bad as it was, was vastly better than the Sandinistas.)
They were basically people who helped rid the country of one tyranny only to find themselves under an even worse one.
Were they violent? Yes, in many cases, because they were fighting a foreign-driven (though locally-managed) tyrannical regime and its army. They had to fight a civil war. Did bad things happen to civilians? Yes, from both sides. That happens in war. At least, unlike the Sandinistas, they didn’t target the civilian population.
There is no evidence of acts orf terrorism. It was the Sandinistas who were the massive abusers of human rights. They routinely tortured, murdered, and otherwise tyrannized innocent people simply for disagreeing with them. As in any war, there were isolated abuses on the Contra side. But they were fighting a civil war to overthrow a totalitarian regime.
The things the Catholic Institute for International Relations (an organization I’ve never heard of before, and which I suspect of being more socialist than Catholic) accuses the Contras of doing, the Sandinistas did on a daily basis.
The only people who think the Contras were terrorists are the friends of the Sandinista regime.