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Edited on Fri Aug-06-10 08:50 PM by Judi Lynn
Not much to be said in favor of people who come here to attempt to slow all communication among the sober, conscious ones of us to a crawl. They don't realize we will and do communicate whenever it's important REGARDLESS. Of COURSE not all that many stories about REAL events in Colombia get any light in the US, Colombia's ENORMOUS benefactor, where the people forced to bankroll atrocities might casually learn about it. Here's a recent article on the subject of intimidated judges: Colombian judges face threats and murder .
Friday, 23 April 2010 14:38 Cameron Sumpter
Colombia's Supreme Judicial Council warns of threats to the country's judiciary, with three judges assassinated in the last two years, and 600 receiving threats over the last four years, reports Semana.
Judge Diego Fernando Escobar was gunned down Thursday outside his home in Medellin.
"In the last two years have been killed three judges and a court official and an attempt was made against a Cali judge ... But the worst for us is that there have been constant threats for the past four years, rising to 600" said Judge Hernando Torres of the Supreme Judicial Council.
President Uribe condemned the assassination and offered a reward of COP100 million for information about those who masterminded the crime.
“This is an wake-up call to the national government to protect the justice system to guarantee the civil liberties of the population,” said Judge Hernando Torres, chairman of the Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Council.
There had been "threats to their family and property, personal threats, threats to bring processes of various kinds, and threats to resources that they give to illegal groups,” according to Torres.
Among those threatened were judges of the Supreme Court, who have been responsible for uncovering links between politicians and paramilitaries, according to Torres.
The Supreme Court judges have also been the victims of illegal wiretapping by Colombia's security agency (DAS).
President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Francisco Escobar, said that budget problems made it difficult for judges to protect themselves.
Escobar said that it was the responsibility of the government and national police to ensure the safety of the judges and in turn the effectiveness of the justice system. http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/9329-colombian-judges-face-threats-and-murder.html~~~~~New article, older crime: Former intelligence chief charged in connection Garzón murder 11 years ago
Published on 6 July
Reporters Without Borders welcomes the recent progress in the investigation into the 1999 murder of journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón. On 30 June, the prosecutor general charged former intelligence chief José Miguel Narváez with involvement in his death.
Narváez use to run the Administrative Department of Security, better known by the initials DAS (see the chuzaDAS report). He has been detained since August 2009 for alleged illegal spying on many leading Colombians including judges, journalists, members of the political opposition and human rights activists.
Carlos Castaño, the onetime head of the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was sentenced in absentia in March 2004 to 38 years in prison for Garzón’s murder. Castaño disappeared around the same time and was never arrested. Two men suspected of carrying out the murder were acquitted for lack of evidence.
Garzón, who worked for Caracol Televisión and Radionet, was gunned down in Bogotá on 13 August 1999. The investigating judge in charge of the case ended his investigation in January 2002, concluding that Castaño commissioned the murder. Judge Julio Roberto Ballén Silva ordered a new investigation in 2004 to determine the possible involvement of ten DAS officials and to identify the real masterminds.
Reporters Without Borders, which was registered as a civil party in the case, welcomes the fact that one of the intelligence officials allegedly involved has finally been charged, even if it has taken more than ten years. This is an encouraging development for the fight against impunity although Colombia continues to be one of the countries where the murders of journalists are least likely to be solved. http://en.rsf.org/colombie-former-intelligence-chief-charged-06-07-2010,37883.html~~~~~Top Colombian judges threatened as they investigate lawmakers
Supreme Court justices face death threats as they investigate dozens of legislators’ links to paramilitary groups.
Top Colombian judges threatened as they investigate lawmakers
Supreme Court justices face death threats as they investigate dozens of legislators’ links to paramilitary groups.
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By Sibylla Brodzinsky, Correspondent / October 22, 2009
Bogotá, Colombia
Three motorcycle police escorts zip through Bogotá's evening traffic jam, siren lights flashing. They stop cars at every intersection so the bulletproof SUV carrying one of Colombia's most threatened men can speed through. Inside, Supreme Court President Augusto Ibáñez sinks into the back seat, weary from a 13-hour day.
Last month he was informed of an assassination plot against him, the vice president of the court, and the president of the court's criminal chamber.
Colombian authorities have long been targeted with violence from right-wing paramilitary groups, drug cartels, and leftist rebels involved in the country's decades-long civil war. But Supreme Court justices here are facing a new flurry of threats as they proceed with a huge effort to investigate, prosecute, and convict dozens of lawmakers who allegedly colluded with paramilitaries in the "parapolitics" scandal.
"Independently, each incident may not seem to mean much, but if you put it all into context, there is clearly a threat against the court," says Mr. Ibáñez. "It was when we started to get into parapolitics that we started seeing more security problems."
Faceless judges system to protect them
In Colombia, where many judges have been killed for their legal rulings, and where a system of faceless judges was set up in the 1990s to protect them, the threats cannot be taken lightly, says Maria McFarland, the top researcher on Colombia for Human Rights Watch in Washington. "So far nothing has happened, but you can't take that for granted," she says.
Most members of the court's criminal chamber, in charge of the parapolitics cases, have been the target of a direct threat or intimidating incident.
Ibáñez's home was burgled in March, but the only things stolen were two computers. Another magistrate reported having been approached during mass by young men in black track suits who greeted him ominously; when the magistrate returned home, the men were in front of his house. And the Supreme Court was one of the main targets of an illegal wiretapping and surveillance program uncovered earlier this year. It was run by the domestic intelligence agency known as DAS.
President Uribe's coalition members investigated
Under the Colombian Constitution, the Supreme Court's criminal chamber has jurisdiction to investigate, prosecute, and convict lawmakers for criminal acts committed as part of their legislative function. Since 2006, 99 lawmakers – mostly members of President Álvaro Uribe's ruling coalition – have been investigated, including the president's cousin Mario Uribe.
The investigations have shown that in many cases lawmakers won their seats in Congress thanks to backing from paramilitary warlords who sometimes threatened or killed their opponents. Those investigations have brought down dozens of lawmakers.
President Uribe last year filed criminal slander charges against then-Supreme Court president Cesar Julio Valencia for saying in a newspaper interview that the president had phoned about his cousin's case. It was then that threats against Mr. Valencia began.
Some of Uribe's supporters have suggested that the court has been overzealous in prosecuting the president's supporters but has done little to investigate lawmakers with alleged ties to leftist rebels. José Obdulio Gaviria, who resigned as one of Uribe's top advisers, wrote in a recent op-ed column that Ibáñez was the "true leader of the opposition" and that leftist FARC guerrillas considered him "the messiah."
"There's always going to be some crazy person out there who will read that and think it gives a license to eliminate you," Ibáñez says. He has asked the police to tighten security for all magistrates. " will always look for the weak link," he says. "But if they think they can stop us, they're very mistaken."• http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2009/1022/p12s01-woam.html~~~~~Even the US government-serving sources here can't conceal ALL the information! Judge murdered in Colombia
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 1:12:48 AM by IANS
Bogota, March 3 (IANS/EFE) A criminal court judge was murdered outside the building where he lived in Bogota by gunmen riding a motorcycle, Colombian police said.
Jose Fernando Patino was shot three times Monday outside the building in north Bogota and was pronounced dead at the scene, the Metropolitan Police said.
The judge recently served in Soacha, a city near the capital, and had been transferred to Fusagasuga, another city in central Colombia.
Patino did not handle any of the cases involving the extralegal executions of young men in Soacha, a judicial official in the Bogota suburb told EFE.
The so-called “Soacha Case” involves about 20 young men lured for a supposed job but then later allegedly slain by Colombian army soldiers and presented as guerrillas killed in combat.
In January, Jose Armando Salamanca Gutierrez was indicted on charges of “simple aggravated kidnapping associated with aggravated homicide” in two of the killings, the attorney general’s Office said.
Salamanca was indicted by the human rights and international humanitarian law prosecutor handling the case in the northern city of Barranquilla. More: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/judge-murdered-in-colombia_100328930.htmlETC. |
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