82 convictions out of 1,486 'false positive' cases prompt investigation

[gbscar]

82 convictions out of 1,486 'false positive' cases prompt investigation
Wednesday, 01 June 2011 11:47
Tom Heyden

The Supreme Judicial Council will investigate complaints by the prosecutor general over delay tactics contributing to only 82 convictions out of 1,486 investigations into alleged "false positive" extrajudicial executions, Caracol Radio reported Wednesday.

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Although only 82 convictions have been made, this does not signify a verdict of innocence for the others, with many of the cases languishing in the preliminary or pre-trial stage.

Prosecutor General Viviane Morales blamed military delay tactics for the lack of convictions on Tuesday, calling for an investigation, as well as court intervention, into "repeated and systematic" delays by the defense.

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Besides military delay tactics, a recent report by a group of international lawyers emphasized that the legal profession in Colombia is severely under-staffed, with prosecutors in some places being assigned up to 2,500 paramilitary cases each.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/16677-82-convictions-out-of-1486-false-positive-cases-prompt-investigation-into-delays.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. It should be noted that the Colombian military received $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid,

while they were murdering these and other thousands of civilians, and the U.S. military and U.S. military 'contractors' were in the country, during this period (and still are), working closely with the Colombian military, present at many military bases (considered U.S. military "forward operating locations" by the Pentagon), providing the Colombian military with training and "technical assistance" and even with USAID/Pentagon-designed "pacification" programs. One such plan, in particular, was designed for a region, La Macarena, where a mass grave was found, containing 500 to 2,000 bodies, many believed to be "false positives"--young men lured by promises of jobs, murdered and their bodies dressed up like FARC guerrillas, to up the military's body count, and earn bonuses, perks and promotions.

The investigation should be occurring HERE, in this country, as well as in Colombia.

All of these horrors occurred with the full political backing of the Colombian military and Colombia's fascist, mafia-like government, by the Bush Junta, and was funded by U.S. taxpayers.

We not only need to know what occurred--and what part, if any, the U.S. military and the U.S. government played in these many and horrible crimes--we need to know why. What were the overt and--probably more important--covert goals of U.S. policy?

Some particular questions I want answered:

Was the U.S. military or its 'contractors' training assassins in Colombia? (There are some indications that they may well have been.)

Was the U.S. "war on drugs" being used as cover for consolidation of the trillion dollar-plus cocaine revenue stream into fewer hands, and direction of the profits to U.S. entities? (Again, there are indications of this but it's a particularly difficult matter to get information on.)

Why is the U.S. government protecting, and even coddling, Alvaro Uribe, who seems to have been running Colombia as a vast criminal enterprise? (Academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard; appointment to a prestigious international legal commission; U.S. involvement in removing witnesses against Uribe from Colombia, out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections; U.S. State Department letter to a U.S. judge essentially telling him to back off from requiring Uribe to give a deposition in the Drummond Coal death squad case).

What, if anything, is the relationship between the USAID/Pentagon designed "pacification" program for La Macarena, and the hundreds of murders in La Macarena by the Colombian military? What was the U.S. military or 'contractor' involvement in implementing that "pacification" program, if any?

Why did the U.S. secretly seek "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia, secretly signed by Uribe, in 2009? Why did they need signed immunity more than a decade into the U.S. military presence in Colombia?

Was the secretly negotiated and secretly signed U.S./Colombia military agreement merely a ratification of "existing arrangements," as some spokespeople said, and if so, was the agreement's apparent increase in U.S. military presence at seven MORE military bases, and its other provisions, ever considered or voted on by the U.S. Congress?

What is the U.S. "status of forces" in Colombia today, and what is its purpose?

Why is the U.S. involved in Colombia's 70 year civil war?

How come the cocaine just keeps flowing out of Colombia, $7 BILLION later?

How come the U.S. was supporting Alvaro Uribe, some 70 of whose closest political associates were under investigation or are already in jail for drug trafficking, ties to the death squads, illegal domestic spying, bribery, corruption, election fraud and other crimes? What was in it for the Bush Junta? Is there no level of malfeasance and crime that is too low to merit U.S. support and funding?

[gbscar]

2. For the most part, those are very valid questions

They are certainly worth asking, even though I don't agree with certain details nor several of your previously proposed answers and hypotheses. But, leaving a lot of nitpicking aside as well as the continued existence of generally unknown factors, I do share your concern for one underlying issue.

The majority of U.S. aid to Colombia has undeniably been spent on supporting military and police operations, using anti-drug or anti-terror rhetoric as an excuse, which have been carried out by commanders, units and personnel consistently implicated in these and other human rights violations, often committed during those same activities and with the active backing of many reactionary politicians in Colombia, largely headed by Uribe himself. As a result, it is absolutely necessary to hold the U.S. government accountable for both its direct and indirect participation in these events.

That's one of the reasons why I don't support the continued flow of U.S. military aid nor, for that matter, the absolute failure known as the war on drugs, whether we want to argue this outcome has been the result of malice, conspiracy, incompetence, circular logic or all of the above (Personally, I'm betting on that last option myself because the "drug war" hasn't worked anywhere else in the world either, regardless of how much or how little influence the U.S. chooses to exert in any given country. Prohibition is a terrible idea, even if we had a task force of angels enforcing it).

Then again, a sufficiently cynical observer would argue that the U.S. government hasn't even been held accountable, in practice, for all of the carnage produced or supported by its previous and ongoing operations throughout the region or even worldwide, to say nothing of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where the U.S. military itself has directly carried out numerous abuses with only a few political and legal obstacles getting in its way.

Whatever answers many of those questions may have, I doubt this last part will soon change for the better.