Paramilitaries reemerge in pockets of Colombia

[Say_What]

Your tax dollars at work... don't miss the cartoon Amnesty International produced about the paras and US military aid. http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/colombia/animation.html

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BARRANCABERMEJA, COLOMBIA - Sandra Gutierrez Torres has a dangerous job. She helps run a grass-roots human rights organization in Colombia's oil capital, Barrancabermeja, and last month her work may have cost the life of her sister.

Katherine Gonzalez Torres disappeared days after a new right-wing paramilitary group calling itself the "Black Eagles" e-mailed a death threat to more than 70 rights groups nationwide: "We will finish with you by means of your families ... your families will pay dearly."

Nothing has been seen or heard of Katherine since. Her family thinks that she's become a victim of a rising tide of organized violence in pockets of the country. The spike in attacks attributed to supposedly demobilized paramilitaries coincides with a growing scandal linking them to some of Colombia's top politicians.

It's unfortunate timing for conservative president Álvaro Uribe, who hosted President Bush Sunday and is hoping a Democrat-controlled US Congress will approve the Bush administration's request for $3.9 billion in new aid, mostly to help Colombia fight the drug trade over the next seven years.

The "para-politics" scandal has seen eight pro-Uribe senators jailed for links with paramilitaries. In late February, Foreign Secretary María Consuelo Araújo resigned after her brother, a senator, was jailed for paramilitary involvement, and her father and cousin, also pro-Uribe politicians, were similarly accused.

The same week, Uribe's former intelligence chief Jorge Noguera was arrested for allegedly supplying the names of human rights workers to paramilitaries.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0312/p04s01-woam.html