In his testimony to the Melo commission, Mr Palparan denied organising death squads.

ECONOMIST: Another dissident is murdered. Is the government to blame?

As a result, Maliki has defended Sadr, even when U.S. forces want to go after death squads acting in his name.

NPR: Al-Sadr: A Complex Figure in the Iraqi Puzzle

Orlando Yorio, who reportedly accused Fr Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work, is now dead.

BBC: Vatican denies Dirty War allegations against Pope

An Iraqi court sentenced Hashemi to death by hanging on Sunday after being convicted of running death squads, a charge he says was politically motivated.

MSN: Iraq stops registering Turkish firms amid row over Hashemi

The involvement of Brazilian police officers in death squads and other criminal organisations during the military government in the 1960s and the 70s is well documented.

BBC: Rio policemen in the Chatuba community

As well as pursuing Gen Pinochet, Mr Garzon also rose to prominence in Spain for investigating Basque separatist group Eta, 1980s-era government death squads and indicting Osama Bin Laden.

BBC: Spain Judge Baltasar Garzon vows to fight conviction

Mr Maliki's office issued a statement which ignored the broader allegations of widespread torture and abuse in official detention centres, but angrily rebutted suggestions that forces under his control acted as death squads.

BBC: Iraqis unimpressed by Wikileaks deluge

This week it heard oral arguments in another controversial case involving Juan Anibal Aguirre-Aguirre, a Guatemalan student leader who has requested asylum because he fears assassination by military death squads if he is made to return home.

ECONOMIST: Immigration

One is the trial that has just begun in Madrid of his former interior minister and other senior officials, who are said to have run anti-terrorist death-squads in the 1980s.

ECONOMIST: Europe��s presidential race: the form