Paramilitaries confess to cremating 150 victims .

[Judi Lynn]

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

[Billy Burnett]

1. Like Honduras coupsters. Nazis.

[Peace Patriot]

2. What we need to know now is who was permitting or ordering or funding this,

questions that may be connected to who the victims were, and that could lead to the top levels of both the Colombia and U.S. militaries and governments.

Systematic murder and cremation of 150 people doesn't likely happen as a random criminal event. Like the 2,000 bodies found in the mass grave in La Macarena, and other such atrocities in Colombia, the horror-masters were more than likely being protected and likely considered themselves immune. With La Macarena, we have considerable evidence pointing to an official policy--even one designed by the Pentagon/USAID--of mass murder as a means of exterminating local community leaders opposed to the narco-thug government in Bogota, or at the very least related to the "false positives" policy of the U.S.-funded Colombian military (rewards for killing civilians and dressing their bodies up as FARC guerrillas). We furthermore now have evidence that Blackwater was engaged in apparently illegal, unauthorized "trainings" in Colombia (the recent State Department findings, and fine of Blackwater for bureaucratic violations, possibly pointing to a coverup of an official Bushwhack policy of training assassins in Colombia, for Afghanistan and Iraq (mentioned in the findings), by (my guess) "turkey shoot" practice on Colombian civilians).

And we have the U.S./Colombia military agreement, negotiated in secret, and providing SIGNED total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia, last year. Promoters of the agreement claimed that it merely ratified existing arrangements. Why then was this agreement negotiated in secret--from the Colombia people, the Colombian courts, the Colombian legislature, all other leaders in Latin America and the American people as well), and why did they need it SIGNED last year--by outgoing pResident Uribe and Bushwhack ambassador Brownfield? The handling of this agreement raises further suspicions that some of these horrors in Colombia were ordered up by the Bush Junta in Washington DC.

We know that the Obama administration is protecting war criminals Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and brethren. Obama himself has said so. ("We need to look forward not backward")--whether by a "deal" that Obama agreed to, or because they are too powerful to prosecute or even to investigate, or as the result of a mere policy/priorities decision. I favor "deal"--initially negotiated in late 2006, when Rumsfeld was ousted, and brokered by Daddy Bush. Obama appointed a member of Daddy Bush's "Iraq Study Group"--Leon Panetta--as CIA Director. Note: Panetta visited Bogota this spring amidst rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in power. We also know that Obama appointed an AG, Eric Holder, who had negotiated a handslap for Chiquita executives who admitted hiring death squads that murdered hundreds of trade unionists on Chiquita farms in Colombia. There is plenty of reason to believe that the Obama administration and Panetta are trying to cleanse the Bush Junta's bloody trail in a lot of places, including Colombia.

I hope these prosecutors in Colombia pursue "chain of command" trails, if they are able to--but I suspect that, as here, they will not be able to (even if they are inclined to do so). What we are likely to see is continued revelation of these horrors at the lowest level of decision-making, with no accountability or no high level accountability for the political/military leaders, here and there, who were encouraging, facilitating, authorizing, funding and/or opportunistically taking advantage of the outrageous, horrendous lawlessness in Colombia.

[naaman fletcher]

3. Where is this evidence?

"With La Macarena, we have considerable evidence pointing to an official policy--even one designed by the Pentagon/USAID--of mass murder as a means of exterminating local community leaders opposed to the narco-thug government in Bogota, or at the very least related to the "false positives" policy of the U.S.-funded Colombian military (rewards for killing civilians and dressing their bodies up as FARC guerrillas)."

What evidence is there that this was an official policy designed by Pentagon/USAID?

And my evidence i mean the normal definition i.e. documents and testimony of people who have knowledge.

[Judi Lynn]

4. US Paramilitaries in Colombia: Now Twice as Illegal

US Paramilitaries in Colombia: Now Twice as Illegal
By: emptywheel Friday August 20, 2010 9:40 am

Remember that Jeremy Scahill report that listed Colombia among the 75 places where JSOC has deployed?

"The Nation has learned from well-placed special operations sources that among the countries where elite special forces teams working for the Joint Special Operations Command have been deployed under the Obama administration are: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Balochistan) and the Philippines. These teams have also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC has also supported US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico. The frontline for these forces at the moment, sources say, are Yemen and Somalia. “In both those places, there are ongoing unilateral actions,” said a special operations source. “JSOC does a lot in Pakistan too.”

In my post on it, I noted that we’re engaging in belligerent activities without apparent legal approval to do so. But that was because this program seemed to use the legal approval to fight al Qaeda to fight other entities, like Latin American leftist terrorist or drug cartels.

Wednesday, the Colombian aspect of our paramilitary activities became even more illegal, because a Colombian court struck down that country’s cooperation agreement with the US because it lacked Congressional approval. (h/t Max Fisher who has a bunch of interesting links on this development)

"A high court in Colombia has voided an accord with the United States that would allow an increased U.S. presence on seven Colombian military bases. The ruling on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court declared the agreement signed by outgoing President Alvaro Uribe unconstitutional because it bypassed approval of the Congress.

The agreement was signed in October and faced intense criticism from Colombia’s more left-leaning neighbors, including Venezuela and Bolivia. President Juan Manuel Santos (pictured above right), who was inaugurated on Aug. 7, enjoys a wide political majority in Colombia’s Congress and told reporters Wednesday that the ruling would have no effect on cooperation between the U.S. and its closest ally in Latin America.

It may well be that Uribe’s successor, Santos, simply gets Congressional approval for this. But until that happens, this decision serves to heighten questions about US involvement in Latin American, not least with regards to incursions into populist Venezuela and Ecuador.

As Adam Isacson explains, this won’t prevent US paramilitaries from doing what they have already been doing.

U.S. military and contractor personnel were still acting under the authorities laid out in a series of old accords (1952, 1962, 1974, 2004, 2007), whose validity the Colombian court did not challenge.Under these old accords, U.S. personnel have already been frequently present at the seven bases listed in the DCA, as well as several others. The difference is that today, there is no “free entry”: each U.S. deployment is subject to a series of Colombian government approvals that would be unnecessary under the DCA. It also means that construction of new facilities at the Palanquero airbase in Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca – for which Congress appropriated $46 million in 2010 – cannot yet begin.

More:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/08/20/us-paramilitaries-in-colombia-illegal-now-twice-as-illegal/