Extradited paramilitaries taken off public record .

[Judi Lynn]

Extradited paramilitaries taken off public record .
Monday, 13 September 2010 11:42 Adriaan Alsema

http://colombiareports.com.nyud.net:8090/pics/2010/09/extradition.jpg

Seven Colombian paramilitary leaders extradited to the U.S. have been removed from public records in the last few months, leaving their victims virtually without hope of compensation or access to the truth, PBS and the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The seven are among more than a dozen former heads of Colombian paramilitary organization the AUC who were extradited to the U.S. to face drug charges. In total, 25 paramilitary members have disappeared off the radar.

Following a ruling by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to block public access to these warlords, every trace of their existence has virtually disappeared.

According to the report, families of paramilitary victims are outraged by the decision, as the paramilitary leaders are no longer collaborating with Colombian justice. This means that they will not receive testimony from the paramilitary leaders on what happened to their loved ones who disappeared, nor receive financial compensation for their distress.

Because information on the paramilitaries' cases is sealed, there is no way to know if the men negotiated lenient sentences or if they are even still in custody.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/11810-colombia-extradition-paramilitary-justice.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. 10,000 demobilized fighters rearm

10,000 demobilized fighters rearm
Tuesday, 14 September 2010 08:12 Adriaan Alsema

http://colombiareports.com.nyud.net:8090/pics/2010/03/kid_gun.jpg

A government report on the demobilization and reintegration of guerrillas and paramilitaries shows that of the 50,000 demobilized fighters, only 5,000 were able to find a job, and 10,000 returned to illegal armed groups.

The 35,000 former fighters who laid down their weapons but did not find a job or return to a life of violence are unemployed and living off government subsidies, the National Commission on Reparation and Reconciliation admitted Monday.

According to the national disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) coordinator, the disappointing figures are the fault of indifference in the private sector, which has failed to provide employment to those who abandoned their life in Colombia's decades-long violent conflict.

The rearmament is most critical in the Caribbean departments Cordoba, Magdalena, Guajira, and Cesar, where 2,200 demobilized paramilitaries reportedly took up arms and joined groups that are fighting for control of the northern drug routes.

Violence in these regions, as well as in Colombia's largest cities, has risen over the past two years following the extradition of the leaders of demobilized paramilitary organization AUC. With the former leaders jailed in the U.S., members of the organization still at large are fighting over who will inherit the multi-million drug trade.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/11824-5000-demobilized-found-job-10000-rearmed-report.html

[Wilms]

2. Soon they'll be given tenure @SOA.

:(

[Judi Lynn]

3. They have some expertise they wouldn't want to be lost in time,

those little touches like gutting people, pulling out their intestines with their bare hands, then filling their stomachs with rocks so the bodies will sink in the river, special techniques like learning how to dismember them expertly so the chainsaw blades don't get snagged up on the clothes of the victims, etc.

Saw or heard a report overnight which said they have had contests to see who can dismember victims the most quickly, with 15 minutes considered expert level time.

The SOA wouldn't want these rare talents to be lost to the ages, but to be passed along to new generations of unredeemable monsters.

[Peace Patriot]

4. I think that this and the "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. soldiers & military 'contractors'

in Colombia, secretly negotiated and signed in secret last year, by Bush Jr pal, Alvaro Uribe, and U.S./Bushwhack ambassador William Brownfield, points to probable U.S. military involvement in the atrocities in Colombia. Also, the State Department just "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" in Colombia (not sure if Colombians) for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. I suspect that the "unauthorized" part (papers not being in order) is the least of what is being covered up here. And I also think that "authorization" is the main issue. The long bloody trail of murder, torture and mayhem authorized by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld appears to have some rivulets, if not rivers, in Colombia. And, true to form, the Obama administration ("we need to look forward not backward") is covering it all up, with these secret "extraditions" and complete sealing of their cases in federal court--to the utter dismay of Colombian prosecutors and victims' families.

The U.S. has no interest in protecting ordinary rightwing death squad assassins and torturers. In fact, the more of these murderers--whether Colombian military or closely tied rightwing paramilitary (about equal in the killings of innocent people in Colombia)--the better for the new U.S. "Smiley Face" policy in Colombia. Death squad cleansing over (decimation of community organizers, teachers, human rights workers, trade union leaders, journalists, peasant farmers, and displacement of five MILLION peasant farmers, with state terror); on to "free trade for the rich." High profile trials of military and paramilitary killers contribute to the democracy cosmetics that is being slapped onto this decade-long horror, funded by $7 BILLION in U.S. aid to the Colombian military.

So, WHY "extradite" some of the Colombia prosecutors' main witnesses--and put them out of reach of the Colombian justice system? There is only one reason that makes any sense--a coverup of U.S. complicity. They may also be protecting Uribe--70 of whose closest political cohorts are under investigation or already in jail for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking and other crimes. But why would they protect Uribe, rather than jettison him altogether? Why, indeed, has the Obama administration HONORED him with a prestigious legal appointment (international commission investigating Israel's firing on aid boats)? This guy is dirty beyond belief. It is very risky. But I think that we are looking at a coverup "package"--to buy Uribe's silence (he certainly knows what the Bushwhacks have been up to in Colombia--he colluded with them), and to silence the most dangerous witnesses.

It's interesting that the UK government this week banned a Colombian journalist, who has been exposing the death squads, from entering England . (She is traveling to Europe to receive a journalism award.) Another risky bit--banning journalists is a no-no in purported democracies. They will probably be pressured to reverse the ban. Why do it, though--putting the UK government on the side of the death squads, who have repeatedly threatened her life?

Could it be related to this--UK military "training" of the Colombian military commander who oversaw the slaughter of 500 to 2,000 Colombian citizens--most probably non-violent civilians--in La Macarena, Colombia, and the dumping of their bodies into a graveyard that became so toxic with decaying flesh that it sickened local children when they drank the local water?

The La Macarena massacre: includes a description of, and links to docs about, USAID/Colombian military ops in La Macarena
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303

The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/

U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves, by Dan Kovalik 4/1/10
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/us-colombia-cover-up-atro_b_521402.html

Colombia: Mass Grave Discovered In La Macarena
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1005/S00001.htm

------------------------

Something STINKS--beyond the piles of rotting bodies that have accumulated in Colombia over the last decade, and I think it is the direct and deliberate complicity of the U.S. and U.K. governments in those murders. THAT would most certainly be a "national security" reason for the "extraditions," for the sealing of the cases, for the secret grant of total immunity to U.S. soldiers and 'contractors,' for the banning of journalists (which the Obama administration also tried here, against yet another Colombian investigator of the death squads), and for honoring narco-thug Alvaro Uribe--IF "national security" means that certain people are so powerful that they pose a threat to the security of our country if we dare to investigate or prosecute them for their crimes.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Rights experts criticize sealing of para cases .

Rights experts criticize sealing of para cases .
Wednesday, 15 September 2010 00:00 Kirsten Begg .

http://colombiareports.com.nyud.net:8090/pics/paramilitary/extradited_paras.jpg

~snip~
For Michael Reed, director of the International Center for Transitional Justice's (ICTJ) Colombian program, the sealing of records and its ramifications for victims of paramilitary violence, are just the latest in a series of Justice and Peace failures.

"From the start, from the get go there has been a lack of transparency," Reed says. "Justice and Peace was shattered, it was blown to pieces when the paramilitaries were extradited," in May 2008 on drug trafficking charges, without the approval of Colombia's Supreme Court.

Reed says that since their extradition there has been a consistent lack of public information and "instead of getting better it's getting worse." He sees the removal of the seven paramilitaries from public records simply as the latest slap in the face in a long series of blows to Colombia's attempts to reparate victims of paramilitary violence. "This is the continuation of an old issue, in which these individuals were taken out of Colombian custody and are now under U.S. custody, which is obviously very much against the interests of the victims," Reed says.

Furthermore, the ICTJ director believes that the agreement reached in July between the U.S. and Colombian governments, which aims to provide Colombian justice greater access to extradited paramilitaries so that they can testify about their crimes, is simply ineffective. "There need to be greater incentives to get them back into the system and to make them talk," he said

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/11835-paras.html