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Remains of Mississippi airman identified 81 years after he died as POW
A 22-year-old airman has been accounted for 81 years after he died as a prisoner of war, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said on Friday.
U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Alvin R. Scarborough, 22, of Dossville, Mississippi was serving in the 454th Ordnance Company when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December 1942 – sparking months of intense fighting. American and Filipino service members continued fighting until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942.
DPAA
After the troops surrendered, thousands of U.S. and Filipino soldiers – including Scarborough – were captured and interred at prisoner-of-war camps. Scarborough was one of the troops subjected to a 65-mile Bataan death march. The Japanese assembled about 78,000 prisoners; there were 12,000 U.S. and 66,000 Filipino service members, according to Army archives, to march up the East Coast of Bataan. Only 54,000 prisoners reached the camp, though the exact numbers are unknown.
He was then held at the Cabanatuan POW camp, where the DPAA said more than 2,500 prisoners of war died. Conditions at the Cabanatuan POW camp were mildly better than Camp O’Donnell – where the majority of POWS perished – and prisoner doctors were able to stem disease and death rates.
Scarborough died July 28, 1942, and was buried along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 215, according to prison camp and other historical records. After the war, graves at the Cabanatuan cemetery were exhumed and the remains were relocated to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila, according to the American Graves Registration Service
Remains from Common Grave 215 were sent to DPAA labs in 2018 for analysis. Many remains weren’t able to be identified, but researchers used anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and mitochondrial DNA – and Scarborough was accounted for on Sept. 21, 2023.
Scarborough will be buried in Carthage, Mississippi, on a date to be determined, the DPAA said.
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Former intelligence chief convicted of “aggravated torture” of Colombian journalist sentenced to 12 years in prison
A Bogota judge has sentenced a former intelligence chief to 12 years in prison for crimes including “aggravated torture” of a journalist, the Colombian public prosecutor’s office said.
Enrique Ariza, former head of Colombia’s defunct DAS intelligence service, was convicted of “persecution, harassment” and other crimes against journalist Claudia Julieta Duque, the prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
Ariza was found guilty of “the crime of aggravated torture,” it said on social media.
With the latest conviction, “eight former officials of this agency have now been sentenced for the persecution to which my family and I were subjected,” Duque said on social media.
On Monday, the former DAS deputy director, Jose Narvaez, was also sentenced to 12 years in prison in the same case. Former intelligence director Giancarlo Auque, also linked to the case, is yet to be tried, Duque said.
The journalist, who had to be protected by bodyguards until she sought refuge in Spain, has accused the DAS of spying on her between 2001 and 2004, and threatening to murder her and rape her daughter when she was 10.
Fernando Vergara / AP
The origin of the harassment was Duque’s investigation of the murder of journalist Jaime Garzon in 1999, in which she denounced DAS involvement in crime.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, two gunmen killed Garzón, host of a daily morning show in Bogota, as he was driving his Jeep Cherokee to the studio. Garzón, who was 38 when he died, was a beloved figure in Colombia whose life story inspired a television mini-series, CJR reported.
In November, another former Colombian state security agent, Ronal Harbey Rivera Rodríguez, was also convicted of aggravated torture against Duque, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported.
In 2017, the Latin American and the Colombian Federations of Journalists granted Duque with a “special recognition for her bravery in the fight for justice,” according to the International Media Women’s Foundation.
“JUSTICE!!” Duque tweeted on Thursday after Ariza was sentenced to prison.