Colombian paramilitary head confesses

[arcos]

Colombian paramilitary head confesses

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Mr. Mancuso, currently in a maximum security prison in this western Colombian city is the first of the country's death squad leaders to confess to his crimes as part of a negotiated deal under which 30,000 illegal right-wing fighters laid down their arms.

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"What's interesting here is that he is talking about the active participation of high-level members of the armed forces," says Gustavo Gallón, head of the Colombian Commission of Jurists. "It's not that we didn't know this, but it's important that he is saying it. There is a lot to be explored here," he says.

Mancuso on Tuesday said his paramilitary group had a budget of about $250,000 a month to pay off the police and military officers in the area he controlled.

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Six other lawmakers are currently being investigated. Mancuso has said he could reveal the names of other politicians that worked together with them.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0117/p06s01-woam.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Wow! Wowie! There are politicians in Colombia tonight ripping their hair out, no doubt.

Hope this guy gets to go for broke and let it all out before they find a way to murder him.

How many of these historical moments is it going to take to bring down Uribe's government, and force U.S. lawmakers to rethink pouring out kazillions of US taxpayer dollars annually for mysterious purposes to Colombia, while not bothering to make any accounting of it to the U.S. taxpayers?

From the article:

"I was the state and I controlled everything," Mr. Lopera of Redepaz recalled Mancuso as declaring in his deposition about the area under his influence.

Mancuso detailed – almost boastfully according to victims' advocates – how the paramilitaries infiltrated every level of government and every state agency, and co-opted regional politics.

He presented to the prosecutor taking his deposition a political pact signed by about 40 politicians and paramilitary leaders on Colombia's northern coast in 2001.

The existence of the pact had been revealed by a senator in November, but the full list of signers had not been revealed.

The extent to which politicians and paramilitaries worked together exploded into a major scandal late last year when the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of three current lawmakers for alleged collusion with death squad leaders.

Six other lawmakers are currently being investigated. Mancuso has said he could reveal the names of other politicians that worked together with them.

How will victims be compensated?

But Areiza cares little for the political intrigue. She plans to stay in Medellin to listen to Mancuso as he continues his testimony this week, hoping to see some sign of contrition from the man who arranged the murder of her father.

She and other victims are expecting Mancuso to detail how he and his men took over the farmland of their victims and to map out how he will return the properties to their legal owners.
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THANK YOU, ARCOS.

[Bacchus39]

4. Uribe's government is the one who negotiated the peace

agreement.

[Say_What]

9. BWAHAHAHAHA you're right. He did negotiate those peace agreements

which allow the paras, responsible for most of the atrocities in Colombia to walk away from their crimes.

As usual, you don't know shit about LatAm.

:rofl:

[Bacchus39]

10. and what is the alternative? more war?

when is the FARC going to come to the table? bwahhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaa

[Say_What]

11. Demobilization was a sham criticized roundly by experts and human rights groups around the globe...

It's nothing more than an agreement between friends--Uribe and his paramilitary pals who are his ardent supporters. Uribe was governor of a state where they are strong, and owns land in zones under their total control. It's a sweetheart deal between friends that has nothing to do with FARC or the decades long civil war, but more to do with Uribe protecting his drug dealing AUC pals who are closely tied to the US-funded military.

Colombia, worst human rights record in the western hemisphere, is the world's 3rd largest recipient of US military funding after Egypt and Israel--your tax dollars at work. :puke:

<clips>

The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Three Variations on a Theme from Uribe

By PHIILIP CRYAN

Bogota.

...His choice of the term "private justice groups" plays into an unfolding story, the historical dimensions of which make his attacks on NGOs look inconsequential. The Uribe administration proposed in August a peace deal with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country's largest federation of right-wing paramilitaries. If the proposal passes Colombia's Congress, AUC troops would give up their weapons and offer symbolic reparations (primarily in the form of cash payments and social work); in exchange, they would receive amnesties from the President and not be required to serve jail time. After ten years, their criminal records would be clean and they would be eligible to hold public office. Impunity would extend even to those leaders already convicted on multiple counts of crimes against humanity.

The proposal has been pilloried by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, European governments, dozens of NGOs, members of the U.S. Congress and numerous newspapers. Reuters, for example, posed the question of whether the government's "conditional freedom" offer for the paramilitaries amounts to "allowing some of Colombia's most feared criminals to literally get away with murder." The Chicago Tribune titled their house editorial on the matter "Colombia's pact with the devils." Human Rights Watch calls Uribe's proposal "the impunity law."

Colombian Senator Rafael Pardo, one of Uribe's most devoted allies until the law was proposed, commented to El Tiempo (Colombia's largest newspaper): "You turn in a farm and that compensates for a massacre?"

...Traveling in southern Colombia's conflict regions, I have heard countless stories of AUC massacres carried out with chainsaws and machetes--slow, public decapitations designed for their spectacular effects: as lessons to those watching. On two occasions I've been told of paramilitaries playing soccer with decapitated heads. In some urban areas they institute a "social control" system: miniskirts for women and long hair for men are prohibited; adulterers are made to wear Scarlet Letter-like marks of shame and homosexuals are run out of town or executed. Anyone suspected of collaborating with guerrillas--anyone in a trade union, doing human rights work, or trying to be a serious journalist or priest or mayor would fall in this category--is murdered, often after prolonged torture. The paramilitaries tell civilians not to move or bury the cadavers of their victims: "leave the bodies to rot in public, so the dogs can get at them," they instruct. On a trip to the southern province of Putumayo--the region where U.S. military aid has been most focused over the first three years of Plan Colombia--last December, I happened to arrive in the city of Mocoa the same day that the bodies of Giovanni and John, two brothers killed by the AUC, were discovered by their mother, who was just returning from a vacation. There were no bullet-wounds. The skin of their faces had been disintegrated by some kind of acid, likely applied while they were still alive.

...Yet "there is 98% impunity" for paramilitary actions, according to a government human rights official from another Putumayo city. "The police refuse to collaborate ." "The military and paramilitaries play volleyball and soccer together," says another civilian government official. Within a day of arriving in a Putumayo city, one can find out--even as an outsider--where the paramilitaries live, their names and ranks, even their military specialties. Whenever asked about collusion, however, military and police officers provide an unvarying response: "Prove it." "We can't act without evidence, without an official complaint being filed," a military commander recently told me. The military insists that civilians' claims of regular paramilitary killings are greatly exaggerated and deny outright the presence of paramilitaries in many cities they in fact control. This just to take one region of Colombia as an example.

The history of military-paramilitary collusion in Colombia is a long one--and it is within this history, finally, that Uribe's amnesty proposal (and other recent offensives against human rights and international humanitarian law) must be understood. This history, in turn, cannot be understood without analysis of the U.S. government's role in Colombia.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cryan10112003.html

[Bacchus39]

12. so your solution is to reconstitute the AUC

and go back to the 80s and 90s in Colombia? or what is your solution? This is directly from the original post:

Mr. Mancuso, currently in a maximum security prison in this western Colombian city is the first of the country's death squad leaders to confess to his crimes as part of a negotiated deal under which 30,000 illegal right-wing fighters laid down their arms.

and this is bad because???

[Say_What]

13. Never said that... said that the peace agreements were a SHAM. 1/2 the planet concurred...

Uribe pal Mancuso was in a country-club prison until 12/01/06 with cell phones, cable, internet. Mancuso can do major damage to Uribe and so in a panic he moved him from the country-club prison with all the comforts of home to a max security prison, probably as a warning not to testify about too many things. Guaranteed if his testimony doesn't do too much damage politically for his pal Uribe he will get off with a slap on the wrist just like half the planet knew when the demobilization started. Meanwhile the AUC is strong as ever as this article points out.

You really are so uninformed about anything in LatAm. Do some research so you don't look so stooopid.


<clips>

...Uribe ordered on Dec. 1 that 59 paramilitary commanders be transferred out of a country-club-style jail -- with access to cell phones, cable television, regular visitors and Internet access -- to a maximum-security prison. In response, paramilitary leaders called off three-year peace talks with the Uribe government last week, and some have threatened to reveal even more damaging information.

The bulk of the evidence against the pro-Uribe politicians comes from a laptop computer confiscated from a notorious paramilitary leader named Rodrigo Tovar, also known as "Jorge 40." In addition to detailing narcotics trafficking routes and hundreds of political assassinations, the data also revealed recordings of meetings with politicians, many of whom are being summoned by investigators.

"For the last five or eight years, it has been impossible for anybody out of favor with the paramilitaries to even campaign in those areas," said former peace commissioner Garcia Peña, who now heads the leftist opposition party, the Polo Democratico Alternativo.

Despite the demobilization and official investigations, some analysts say the paramilitary militias are as strong as ever. They point out that some fighters are organizing new groups with names like the Black Eagles and still hold sway over politics, organized crime and drug trafficking.

Alberto Rangel, a security analyst in Bogota, says paramilitary political power will continue as long as the forces that led to their creation -- civil war, drug money and weak government -- remain.

"If you demobilize the paramilitaries and those factors still exist, you're going to have to continue dealing with paramilitaries," Rangel said.

http://www.forcolombia.org/takeaction/letter

[Bacchus39]

14. bacano, entonces no me podés enseñar nada de Colombia

verdad? and you don't know what Colombia needs to do to achieve peace either.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Just saw your wonderful articles. Tremendous. Coming back tomorrow to study them.

So glad to see you found these outstanding pieces. Hoping they'll be read thoroughly by interested DU'ers. As one points out, you're not likely to hear much of the truths about Colombia in corporate U.S. media.

The only thing I've heard as evil as the paramilitaries taking chain saws to their massacres would have to be the news _Bush's new Iraq has death squad murderers torturing people with electric drills. Colombian and Iraqii death squads sound very similar.

Admire your nearly magical ability to find the finest information. We really need all the REAL information we can get, as you know. It's in such short supply these days......

[Judi Lynn]

2. Testimony details death squad acts in Colombia

Testimony details death squad acts in Colombia
Ex-militia chief cites massacres, drug trafficking
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff | January 18, 2007

BOGOTÁ -- A former chief of Colombia's right-wing death squads testified in court this week about his role and the involvement of military and public officials in scores of massacres and assassinations of perceived political opponents.

The testimony by Salvatore Mancuso in the northwestern city of Medellín is a key step toward clarifying and assigning blame for atrocities committed in the last two decades of Colombia's ongoing civil war between insurgents and the state.

In two days, Mancuso, 48, detailed a nexus of collusion by army generals, police colonels, a state prosecutor, and politicians in planning the murders and seizing the land of scores of alleged leftists, local politicians, and peasantsaccording to lawyers and victims who were permitted to watch the closed-door sessions.

Dressed in an expensive suit and reading quickly in a matter-of-fact tone from a prepared statement, they said, Mancuso testified that his men paid the army and police in one region $400,000 a month for their cooperation, and that paramilitaries coerced voters at gunpoint to support regional and presidential candidates who favored their right-wing agenda.
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http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2007/01/18/testimony_details_death_squad_acts_in_colombia/?page=2

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This story is so important people need to know what is being done with their money, in their name, to helpless citizens in Colombia.

I think the headline of this story, "Testimony details death squad acts in Colombia," is vivid enough to be a good advertisement for the content, which has been going on for a couple of days already. U.S. money has been supporting a corrupt government which employs the use of these hideous death squads in trying to supress human rights workers, kill off the union leaders, and has the highest number of murdered journalists IN THE WORLD, and this continues without a peep from _{George W. Bush,} who has been quoted as wanting to turn Iraq into a state like Colombia.

It's not a subject to try to sweep under the rug, or toy around with.

[Bacchus39]

3. the current government of Colombia is the one who is prosecuting

the death squad leaders and has negotiated the peace deal.

"
Mr. Mancuso, currently in a maximum security prison in this western Colombian city is the first of the country's death squad leaders to confess to his crimes part of a negotiated deal under which 30,000 illegal right-wing fighters laid down their arms."

on the other hand, the leading rebel group the FARC have made no similar efforts for a peace agreement.

[High Plains]

6. Yeah, the Colombian government isn't offering them sweetheart deals.

It only does that with its de facto allies, the paramilitaries.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Human Rights organizations indicate paramilitaries have committed the lion's share of atrocities.

July 1, 2005

Colombia's Disappeared
Their Names, At Least
By JUSTICIA Y PAZ


Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Vélez opened negotiations with the country's right-wing paramilitaries almost as soon as he took office in August 2002. The paramilitaries -- currently grouped in a national federation called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) -- have been responsible for the majority of murders and forced displacements of civilians in Colombia's tragic armed conflict for many years. Over 3 million Colombians have been uprooted from their homes and communities -- "displaced" -- since 1985, and tens of thousands more have been murdered. The paramilitaries' signature terror methods include slow torture, dismemberment, and the use of chainsaws. When guerrilla groups participated in the formation of new political parties in the 1980s as part of an attempt to resolve the decades-old war between the government and guerrillas, paramilitaries exterminated over 3,000 members of these new parties.

In a proposal announced in June called the "Justice and Peace" law, Uribe seeks to offer the paramilitaries immunity from any serious punitive consequences for their crimes. Under Uribe's proposal, they will not have to turn over the land and wealth they have acquired to victims (or even the government); tell the truth about their crimes to victims, survivors, or the society; or serve more than a few years in jail.

Uribe is the George W. Bush administration's only significant remaining ally in South America, a region whose people and leaders have become increasingly critical of U.S. economic and military policies. Some analysts have likened Colombia's strategic role for the U.S. to that of Israel in the Middle East: a military and economic beachhead for the U.S.. On June 28 the House of Representatives gave the go-ahead for another $700+ million in foreign aid to Colombia, bringing the total since "Plan Colombia" began in 2000 to nearly $4 billion of U.S. aid, over 80% of it military.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/cryan07012005.html

[Bacchus39]

8. who is being prosecuted?? Not the FARC

they go about their murderous ways. peace agreement?? we don't need no stinking peace agreement.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Colombia: Paramilitary Implicates Military

Colombia: Paramilitary Implicates Military
By Staff
Jan 18, 2007

A Colombian paramilitary leader has implicated members of the Colombian military in rights abuses, El Tiempo reported.

Salvatore Mancuso told state prosecutors that soldiers and commanders took part in massacres committed by the right-wing group created by Colombian landowners and drug lords to combat left-wing rebel groups. The Colombians have been fighting rebel groups for more than four decades.
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Human rights groups have long accused the Colombian military and police, which receive some $700 million in annual funding from the United States, of collaborating with right-wing militias. But Mancuso's testimony is the first confession to detail those links, down to the names of generals and colonels who supposedly worked hand-in- glove with illegal militias.

General Freddy Padilla, the commander of the Colombian armed forces, released a statement Tuesday denying that the military had colluded with militias and defending a decorated general, now dead, whom Mancuso accused of extensive cooperation in planning massacres.

Mancuso also cited a local prosecutor who is now a fugitive from justice believed to be in the United States, who he said had supplied names of suspected leftists to be targeted for assassination and tipped off paramilitaries to state investigations and operations against them.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/18/news/colombia.php

[rman]

16. kick