New armed drug-trafficking groups menace Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: BBC News

12 September 2010 Last updated at 02:18 ET
New armed drug-trafficking groups menace Colombia

Armed groups of drug-traffickers have overtaken left-wing rebels as Colombia's main source of violence, local think tank Indepaz says.

The groups have emerged since the demobilisation of the illegal United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries.

The think tank says they are present in 29 of Colombia's 32 provinces.

It based its findings on its own field work as well as data from government agencies and the media.

The demobilisation of the AUC in 2006 was one of the main successes of former President Alvaro Uribe, who left office in August.

But Indepaz said a dozen or so new narco-paramilitary groups had quickly replaced the AUC in much of Colombia.

Extreme violence

With names like the Black Eagles and Rastrojos, they combine control of cocaine production and smuggling with extreme violence, though with less of a political agenda.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11274221

[The Magistrate]

1. Just The A.U.C. Under A Different Name ,Ma'am

[Judi Lynn]

2. According to a laptop taken in an arrest of a para, "Jorge 40," many of the demobilized men

they thought had handed in their weapons, and given up this life of extreme violence against the Colombian people were actually hired peasant stand-ins.

Rodrigo Tovar Pupo's ("Jorge 40") laptop's contents were just becoming publicized when something huge in Colombia sidetracked the media, 'though I can't remember what it was. Jorge 40's laptop simply faded away in media reference on the spot.

Here's a reference to it I just located in a quick search:

DECEMBER 2006

Colombia’s Peace Processes: Multiple
Negotiations, Multiple Actors

Cynthia J. Arnson, Jaime Bermúdez, Father Darío Echeverri, David Henifin,
Alfredo Rangel Suárez, León Valencia

INTRODUCTION

by Cynthia J. Arnson 1

~snip~
Some of the most damning evidence of paramil-
itary duplicity in the peace process emerged from a
seized laptop computer belonging to paramilitary
leader Rodrigo Tovar (alias “Jorge 40”). According
to police reports leaked to the press, the computer
detailed cocaine smuggling routes; the names of
sympathetic members of the Congress, the military,
and the police; and Tovar’s involvement in ordering
the murder of 558 trade unionists, shopkeepers, and
suspected guerrilla sympathizers in northern
Colombia. The computer also contained e-mail
messages written by Tovar in which he instructed
his troops to recruit peasants to pose as demobiliz-
ing fighters, thereby feigning compliance with the
peace process without disarming his actual fighters.12


These disclosures were preceded by equally
damning accusations that members of Colombia’s
domestic intelligence service known as the
Department of Administrative Security (DAS) had
collaborated with paramilitary and organized crime
groups, tipping them off about ongoing police or
military investigations, providing them with infor-
mation about targets for intimidation or assassina-
tion, and interfering in congressional and presiden-
tial elections.13 In October 2005, Uribe had accept-
ed the resignation of DAS director Jorge Noguera,
who had served as regional coordinator for Uribe’s
presidential campaign on the Atlantic coast in 2002,
in light of allegations of paramilitary infiltration of
the intelligence service.14 Colombia’s Procuraduría
General (Inspector General) filed disciplinary charges
against Noguera in November 2006, accusing him of
sharing intelligence information with paramilitary
leaders and of diverting public funds for personal
enrichment.15 Noguera was also accused by a former
associate of organizing massive vote fraud on Uribe’s
behalf during the 2002 presidential elections.16

In what appeared to be a burgeoning scandal,
judicial authorities acted in November 2006 on evi-
dence gathered by Colombia’s Supreme Court
regarding paramilitary infiltration of the Congress.
Two senators and one deputy, all of them members
of parties forming part of President Uribe’s coali-
tion, were arrested on charges of conspiring with
paramilitary groups; one of the senators, Álvaro
García Romero, was charged additionally with
“organizing, promoting, arming, and financing”
paramilitary groups in the department of Sucre.17

Some of the evidence against all three reportedly
had been obtained from “Jorge 40’s” seized comput-
er. Six other pro-Uribe lawmakers were called for
questioning by the Supreme Court in December.

The investigations and charges reflected, on the
one hand, an invigorated effort by the office of
Colombia’s attorney general and the Supreme Court
to prosecute members of the political elite for collab-
orating with paramilitary groups. On the other hand,
the charges appeared to confirm what has long been
alleged but few have documented: that paramilitarism
in Colombia is a phenomenon far deeper than its mil-
itary apparatus, penetrating Colombia’s political, eco-
nomic, and institutional life. How close, if at all, the
scandal will come to President Uribe himself remains
to be seen. But senior officials, notably Attorney
General Mario Iguarán, have not shied from compar-
ing the current crisis to the Proceso 8000, the investi-
gation of former President Ernesto Samper for having
accepted campaign funds from the Cali drug traffick-
ing cartel in 1994. The controversy dogged Samper
during most of his presidency and led the United
States to revoke his visa. The paramilitary scandal,
according to Iguarán, is worse.18

More:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:mbYye8F3geMJ:wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/lap_colombia1.pdf+Colombian+paramilitaries+demobilization+stand-ins+peasants+laptop&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESivTYoRvhlHV7PMFv-_z8ZViToSy93HeRM2lxQrH_pSZsXJrXWvMf2QscRm-HLByHCrb1rXtuv6NZ8CDIIRFlV1rRgF1BNGZygbVR0ZwAYGCVZEVl43_drf61oEm1Q23sNgBkv7&sig=AHIEtbQxzolJpTPa2Ld9eN_e1mJWBfxUpQ

~~~~~

http://files.nireblog.com.nyud.net:8090/blogs/cafederedaccion/files/jorge40.jpg http://www.semana.com.nyud.net:8090/photos/Generales%5CImgArticulo_T2_40959_20061110_115035.jpg


Of course, since he was extradited to the U.S., whatever is in his files here is undoubtedly sealed by now!

[ck4829]

3. "though with less of a political agenda". That's because Uribe and Santos carry the political ball

K&R.

[Judi Lynn]

4. These "new groups" are still assassinating the same people the old AUC paras killed,

union workers, farm workers, indigenous people, African-Colombian people, human rights workers, teachers, etc.

Very same kind of atrocities going on, as if nothing had ever happened!

[Peace Patriot]

5. The Colombian MILITARY is the main source of violence fueled by $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid.

Don't let the BBCons con you with twisted lies like those in this article.

"Armed groups of drug-traffickers have overtaken left-wing rebels as Colombia's main source of violence, local think tank Indepaz says.--the BBCons

According to Amnesty International, 92% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia are committed by the Colombian military itself (about half) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). The leftist guerrillas, 2%. A recent UN human rights report provides similar statistics on all extrajudicial killings (trade unionists and all others).

This lying piece of shit article leaves out both the $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid as the fuel on this fire, AND the close ties between the Colombian military and government with the rightwing death squads. They also don't mention that five MILLION peasant farmers have been driven from their lands by state terror, and the thieving, murdering, lying, greedbag pieces of shit running the government have given the land to their mafia brethren, the big, protected drug lords and multinational corporations like Monsanto, Chiquita, Occidental Petroleum and Exxon Mobil.

Is it any wonder that there is an armed leftist resistance to this horrible fascist government? Is it any wonder that the poor majority in the entirety of Latin America despises the U.S. government for actions like this--ARMING the fascist narco-thugs running Colombia, also trying to overthrow DEMOCRATIC governments, such as those in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador, when the poor majority wins honest elections?

"The BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Colombia says the cocaine trade is still the principal motor of the armed conflict, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the illegal armed groups."--the BBCons

SEVEN **BILLION** DOLLARS in U.S. military aid is "the principal motor of the armed conflict"!

And those are just the SUPERFICIAL aspects of the lies and disinformation in this article. The deeper aspects...

Some 70 of the closest political cohorts of the outgoing U.S. puppet, Alvaro Uribe, including family members, are under investigation, being prosecuted or are already in jail for drug trafficking, bribery, fraud and ties to the death squads. Yet this mafia don received the "Medal of Freedom" from Bush Jr, and is also being honored by the Obama administration with a prestigious legal appointment (of all the bloody things!). Believe me, this Bush crime pal is being protected by the Bush Cartel or the CIA or both.

Last year, dozens of convicted rightwing paramilitary murderers were whisked out of Colombia in a SECRET "extradition" to the U.S., to put them out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors who were counting on their testimony to get at the mafia bosses. They were charged with mere drug trafficking here and then their cases COMPLETELY SEALED, so that Colombian prosecutors and relatives of the victims can't even find out where they are.

This mind-boggling U.S. interference in Colombian justice was arranged, with Uribe, by yet another Bush Junta criminal operative, William Brownfield, the Bush Junta ambassador to Colombia whom the Obama administration and the CIA (headed by one of Daddy Bush's cohorts, Leon Panetta) kept in place for two years (he just left), while he completed several SECRET deals, including this one-getting the witnesses out of the country literally in the dead of night--and the U.S./Colombia military agreement, which provided a Uribe signature on total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. (Note: The U.S. State Department just "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of Colombians for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, another mass grave has also come to light, containing 500 to 2,000 bodies, in a region of Colombia--La Macarena--of special interest and activity by the U.S. military and the USAID.)

The Bush Junta actively stoked Colombia's 40+ year civil war, with $7 BILLION in funding (that we know about) and actively fought and sabotaged efforts at a peaceful settlement of that ancient conflict.

The U.S. "war on drugs" is a corrupt, murderous, failed program, which has in fact created an underworld of crime--just like Prohibition did, only on a huge, worldwide scale. And the cocaine just keeps on flowing--out of the very countries where this war profiteer program gets a boot in. What's wrong with this picture?

But perhaps the worst part of it is that the "war on drugs" has been used to murder thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, peasant farmers and others in Colombia--all "terrorists," in Uribe's own words--and to displace five million peasant farmers from their lands--a tenth of Colombia's population, the second worst human displacement crisis in the world--IN PREPARATION FOR U.S. "free trade for the rich." To create a compliant, terrorized, slave labor force. To prevent--by murder and mayhem--political opposition to the rape of Colombia's land and resources by multinational corporations. And to use Colombia as a launching pad for economic and political warfare--and very possibly outright war--against Colombia's neighbors.

England, as junior partner in the "Project for a New American Century," is on board for this rape of South America, just as it was for the rape of Iraq. That is why the BBCons are telling such lies as these. They have been as bad as the New York Slimes on the psyops/disinformation campaign against the Chavez government in Venezuela, which represents the ALTERNATIVE to Colombia: fair elections, social justice, economic/political cooperation among Latin American countries, and creation of a Latin American "common market." And now they are complying with the U.S. coverup of the many and horrible crimes committed in Colombia with U.S. encouragement and massive funding (and possibly U.S. military participation).

The great majority of Latin Americans want an end to U.S. imperialism which takes several forms--the militarization, murder and mayhem wrought by the U.S. "war on drugs," dictation from the U.S.-controlled IMF/World Bank banksters, and gross U.S. interference, whether by supporting rightwing coups (recently in Honduras, tried in Venezuela) or massive USAID and other funding of rightwing groups all over Latin America, intense psyops/disinformation campaigns, and political bullying and economic warfare of every kind. The riders on U.S. imperialism--such as the U.K, Canada and European multinationals and big investors--thus employ their own propaganda organs, such as the BBCons and Rotters, to cover up massive crime and to promote corpo-fascist myths (such as this one--that armed rightwing groups are "overtaking" armed leftist groups, as to violence in Colombia, when it is the Colombian military, fueled by U.S. billions, which is committing MOST of the violence, in collusion with rightwing groups and the criminals running the government).

This kind of distortion and lying in a once-reliable news organization is infuriating and appalling. Perhaps the most excruciating example of it has been the New York Slimes and THEIR war on Iraq, and this one--on Latin America--is a close second. But we must get past disillusionment and start ANALYZING what these 'news' propagandists are feeding us. It takes many forms. One of them is the vast distortion created by the black holes in these 'news' articles where information should be. The omission of AI's and other statistics on the Colombian military's murder of civilians alone creates such a severe distortion in this article that it might just as well have been written by the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland." Upside down, inside out and backwards.

Now that the Colombian prosecutors' main witnesses have been spirited away to secret locations in the U.S., and now that all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia have been totally "immunized" in a secret negotiation, and now that the very dirty Uribe has been paid off with U.S. medals and honors, and his former Defense Minister installed in a filthy election (after a ten year pogrom against political leftists), time to "expose" the lesser rungs of Murder, Inc., and put a "Smiley Face" on this horrible decade in Colombia.

The BBCons are clearly on board for phase 2 of this U.S.-run multinational corporate/war profiteer assault on Latin America.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Yes, the BBC is backing up the official US corporate media line on Latin America,

with some occassional exceptions in feature pieces by superior journalists, like Hugh O'Shaughnessy at the Guardian, but they are few and far between. Just like the Mid-East coverage, as you pointed out.

Damned sad. As Mark Weisbrot, who also contributes to the Guardian occassionally said, if you plan to read accurate information about Latin America you will need to use the internet and generally forget the conventional media sources.

As long as the Colombian government keeps putting up people from their power structure to run for election and making sure they get elected they are NOT going to end that war. As it is, as has been admitted, sometimes they simply don't have as many "enemy" bodies as they feel they need to make it appear they are fighting a terrible foe, they just go take young men from the Colombian population, and have them murdered by either the military, or paramilitary, then they claim them as dead FARCs.

This hellish practise is something the Colombian people can't fight! The Colombian people can't successfully revolt against a government with the full force and money of the government of hostage US taxpayers behind it. The US won't back away because it will be using Colombia as a land-based carrier from which, as Rumsfeld stated in his published message, they will be conducting programs to help "protect" governments which "ask" the US to save them from their populist enemies. He refers to countries from which they can move against other countries as "lilly pad" countries.

That makes the Colombian people prisoners of their own government. Many have left years ago, a constant stream. many simply don't have the resources. Some are driven off their land, and magically the government ends up owning their property which gets sold to either agri-busiesses like palm tree plantations for cosmetics, etc., or biofuel, or bananas, etc., or for mining, or manufacturing.

With all those billions of US taxdollars flowing to Colombia, the PEOPLE are not better off in any sense, and serious journalists left in Colombia, so incredibly few, since the rest admittedly self-censor for survival, the remaining working journalists require constant bodyguards, and armor plated cars for all the passages of everyone in their families.

Somehow this kind of information just doesn't make it to the BBC, or to ABC, or cable tv, or any of our newspapers. It's there, they have chosen not to bother us with it. Our tax money is required, but the courtesy of the truth about where it's going is denied.

[Imajika]

7. Judy Lynn, just curious...

...do you support the FARC?

Just a yes or no question.

[EFerrari]

10. This is not a two-sided conflict. The choices aren't FARC or the Colombian government.

There are also right wing paras, there are the US agencies that have fueled these conflicts on behalf of the government and also for their own purposes and there is the Colombian people trying to survive them all.

[Imajika]

11. That wasn't my question...

I was asking Judy very specifically if she supported the FARC. Just a yes or no question is all.

I am quite aware that Columbia has problems with right wing paramilitary groups.

[EFerrari]

13. The paras are only a part of a complex picture

and your "question" reflects your limited grasp of the situation.

[Imajika]

15. No, my question still stands....

It really is a yes or no question.

Disliking the paramilitaries and/or the government does not mean one supports the FARC.

There are a number of people that post on the these threads (pertaining to Cuba, Venezuela, Columbia, etc) that seem to endorse and actively supporting marxist/leninist revolutionary movements and individuals. As FARC claims it is an "agrarian, anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninist organization of Bolivarian inspiration" I am curious whether Judy supports this group.

Again, it is a yes or no question.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Colombian Victims of Paramilitary Violence Plead for Access to U.S. Justice System

September 10th, 2010
Women, War & Peace in Colombia
Colombian Victims of Paramilitary Violence Plead for Access to U.S. Justice System

http://www-tc.pbs.org.nyud.net:8090/wnet/wideangle/files/2010/09/Bela_cropped.jpg

Bela Henriquez, a 23-year-old biology student from Colombia, says her father, Julio Henriquez, an environmentalist and human rights defender, had been organizing peasants in the Caribbean state of Magdalena to stop growing coca plants, the chief ingredient in cocaine, and to farm alternative legal crops.

But paramilitaries belonging to the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) controlled coca production in this region, and on the orders of their commander, Hernan Giraldo Serna (alias “El Patron”), they kidnapped and disappeared Henriquez after a community meeting in 2001.

Giraldo Serna confessed to the crime as part of an amnesty program in Colombia called Justice and Peace. He and thousands of paramilitaries demobilized and turned themselves in to the authorities in 2006, promising to tell the truth about the murders and forced disappearances they carried out in exchange for more lenient jail sentences and other benefits. But on May 13, 2008, in a move that shocked Colombians, President Alvaro Uribe authorized the extradition of Giraldo Serna and 13 other top paramilitary commanders to the United States to face narco-trafficking charges. The possibility that Bela would receive any justice for her father’s murder vanished overnight.

For half a century, war has raged in Colombia between leftist guerrillas fighting the state and right-wing paramilitaries that originally formed to protect landowners from the guerrillas. But paramilitaries, like the guerrillas, soon began funding their operations through the narcotics trade, and systematically killing anyone they believed had leftist sympathies.

More:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/women-war-peace-in-colombia/colombian-victims-of-paramilitary-violence-plead-for-access-to-u-s-justice-system/6139/

[Judi Lynn]

9. Arrest made in murders of union activists at Colombian mine owned by Alabama coal company

September 8, 2010 3:28 PM

Arrest made in murders of union activists at Colombian mine owned by Alabama coal company

The brother of the former Inspector General of Colombia has been arrested in connection with the murder of two union activists working for Drummond, a multinational coal company based in Birmingham, Ala.

Jaime Blanco Maya allegedly ordered the killing of labor rights activists Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya in Colombia in 2001, according to Colombia Reports. The arrest was ordered by a human rights prosecutor in Bogota who is investigating the killings.

Blanco Maya was working as a Drummond contractor at the time the unionists were killed, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports. The crimes occurred during a 2001 incident in which a bus carrying several dozen workers from Drummond's La Loma mine was stopped by 15 gunmen -- some wearing Colombian military uniforms -- who forced off the two leaders of the Sintramienergetica union local.

Locarno, the local's president, was shot on the spot. The tortured body of Orcasita, the local's vice president, was found a few days later. Gustavo Soler, the man who succeeded Locarno as president, was also murdered not long after taking office.

More:
http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/09/arrest-made-in-murders-of-union-activists-at-colombian-mine-owned-by-alabama-coal-company.html

[Judi Lynn]

12. Paramilitaries confess to cremating 150 victims .

Paramilitaries confess to cremating 150 victims .
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 10:56 Adriaan Alsema

Former paramilitaries admit to cremating the bodies of some 150 of their victims in northern Colombia between 2000 and 2004, prosecutors told news agency AP.

According to Leonardo Cabana of the prosecutor general's Justice and Peace unit, paramilitaries testified that "approximately 150" corpses "were thrown into ovens" made of bricks and cement.

"They used the practice to make their victims disappear without leaving a trace, primarily because of the large number of deaths there were in this area," Cabana told AP.

The paramilitary commanders denied having thrown living victims in the ovens, "but we haven't fully ruled out that possibility," said the prosecutor.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/11598-paras-confess-to-cremating-150-victims.html

~~~~~
Earlier article posted at D.U., same subject:

Google translation: Mancuso admits that hundreds of paramilitary victims cremated

Mancuso admits that hundreds of paramilitary victims cremated
April 29, 2009 - 17:59 --

Bogotá, Apr 29 (EFE) .- Former Colombian paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso admitted today that his men burned in kilns to hundreds of its victims, with the consent of political leaders and members of the Army.

In a court declaration in Washington, which sent the Colombian television, the former leader of the AUC (AUC) said the cremations were in the region of Norte de Santander.

Mancuso, who was extradited a year ago to United States to answer charges of drug trafficking revealed that in some cases the bodies were unearthed and then burned to leave no trace.

He explained that this action was to prevent, with the appearance of the bodies of those killed were shot numbers of violent deaths in Colombia, which would create a controversy.

More:
http://sdpnoticias.com/sdp/contenido/2009/04/29/387279

[Judi Lynn]

14. A reminder things aren't always as they seem in corporate media. This story

was trumped here as a bombing by Colombian government enemies. Any retraction on it never surfaced here.

Last Updated: Monday, 11 September 2006, 09:42 GMT 10:42 UK

Colombia military in bomb scandal
By Jeremy McDermott
BBC News, Medellin

Army officers in Colombia have been accused of placing car bombs around the capital in the latest military scandal to hit the country. The officers hoped to claim reward money from the government's informants programme for discovering the bombs.

President Alvaro Uribe made a televised address to the nation urging Colombians to keep faith in the security forces, amid a growing crisis in confidence. He has made the strengthening of the military his government's cornerstone. Such is the crisis in confidence in the military that President Uribe decided that he had to show his face to the nation and reassure Colombians that his military, backed by Washington, was not spinning out of control.

'Isolated incidents'

In the latest scandal, army officers are accused of placing car bombs around Bogota, including one that went off wounding more than a dozen soldiers and killing a civilian. The motivation was to claim reward money from the government, which offers payments of up to $400,000 (£220,000) for information on the activities of Marxist rebels and drugs traffickers. In another incident, 10 policemen were killed by the army in what was presented as a friendly fire tragedy. However, evidence has shown that they were killed at point-blank range. Several soldiers, including a colonel, have been arrested and accused of murdering the policemen on the orders of a notorious drug baron.

Mr Uribe insisted that these scandals are isolated incidents and that things are getting better. But evidence now suggests that the military are contributing to the violence, not just fighting it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5333980.stm