Colombia arrests right-wing paramilitary leaders

[Say_What]

<clips>

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian police on Wednesday jailed the country's top right-wing paramilitary commanders two days after President Alvaro Uribe threatened to extradite them if they did not live up to a peace deal.

The move was intended to help end Colombia's four-decade-old guerrilla war and ensure continued support from the United States, which has given the country billions of dollars in aid.

Up to now, the heads of the far right United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which terrorized this Andean country in the name of fighting left-wing rebels and is accused of drug trafficking, had been free to travel around with bodyguards in luxury vehicles and had been seen regularly by witnesses in high-priced shopping districts.

Top commander Salvatore Mancuso and at least six other AUC leaders were arrested or turned themselves in on Wednesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060816/wl_nm/colombia_paramilitaries_dc_2


The top commanders of far-right Colombian paramilitaries Salvatore Mancuso (L) and Ernesto Baez walk past their fighters before surrendering weapons in Tulua Valle del Cauca province, in this December 18, 2004 file picture. Colombian police on Wednesday arrested at least seven right right-wing paramilitary commanders two days after President Alvaro Uribe warned them to live up to their side of a peace deal or face sanctions. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

[stepnw1f]

1. Good! (nt)

[Bacchus39]

2. too bad the FARC won't negotiate at all

n/t

[Joanne98]

3. Oh this is sweet. Finally these monsters see justice.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Uribe had to do something when he realized their barbarity was

jeopardizing the ENORMOUS DOLE _Bush is handing out to them at the U.S. taxpayers' unbelievable expense!

From the article:

Rights groups have said the government had been overly generous in reducing prison terms and giving other benefits to paramilitaries who gave up their arms. More than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their guns as part of the deal.
(snip)

Uribe was sharply criticized last month when a draft resolution saying the paramilitaries could spend two thirds of their jail terms on their farms was leaked to the press.

"He is trying to show that he is not caving in to the paramilitaries," said Maria McFarland, Colombia specialist at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The militias were formed in the 1980s by landowners trying to protect their property from Marxist rebels. The private armies soon branched out into cocaine smuggling and tortured and massacred peasants they suspected of cooperating with their enemies.
(snip/)

[Bacchus39]

5. when are the FARC commanders going to turn themselves in

I wonder?

[Judi Lynn]

6. Very unpleasant article published last year few have seen:

Colombia Told to Pay Damages in Massacre

October 15, 2005
Marianela Jimeniz / Associated Press

the InterAmerican Human Rights court has ordered Colombia to pay damages in the 1997 massacre of dozens of villagers by right-wing paramilitary fighters. The government was told to pay $1 million in material damages and another $2.6 million in punitive damages to family members of 20 victims who have been identified.

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/i/630/ 10-13-2005/8a5500126d8b2139.html

(October 12, 2005) — An international human rights court announced Wednesday that it has ordered Colombia to pay damages in the 1997 massacre of dozens of villagers by right-wing paramilitary fighters.

Human rights groups and former soldiers have criticized the Colombian army for not sending troops to the village of Mapiripan to stop the bloodshed, in which the anti-rebel militias killed dozens of unarmed civilians they accused of being leftist guerrilla sympathizers.

In the ruling, issued last month but not released until Wednesday, the InterAmerican Human Rights court ordered the government to pay $1 million in material damages and another $2.6 million in punitive damages to family members of 20 victims who have been identified.

The San Jose, Costa Rica-based court also ordered the government to construct a monument and identify the rest of the victims. A total of 49 people were believed slain.
(snip/...)

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=3286

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Colombians said to mask civilian deaths
By Hugh Bronstein, Reuters | February 14, 2006

BOGOTA -- Security forces have killed civilians, and have covered up the killings by dressing up the bodies as Marxist guerrillas, according to testimony in an annual United Nations human rights report released yesterday.

Last year, UN investigators said, they saw an increase in allegations of extrajudicial executions that, the report said, attributed to soldiers and police.

Those officials often presented the killings as deaths of guerrillas in combat, said a report, which was issued by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The report covers the year 2005.

''Cases were recorded in which commanders themselves had allegedly supported the act of dressing the victims in guerrilla garments to cover up facts and simulate combat," the report said.
(snip/...)

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2006/02/14/colombians_said_to_mask_civilian_deaths/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
Washington has provided more than $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia over the past two years--making Colombia the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid behind Israel and Egypt. The United States has provided weapons, helicopters and training to a Colombian military that is closely-allied to right-wing paramilitary death squads responsible for more than 70 percent of the country's human rights abuses, especially civilian massacres.
(snip)

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia121.htm

[Judi Lynn]

7. Colombia struggles to identify its 'disappeared'

from the August 16, 2006 edition

Colombia struggles to identify its 'disappeared'
Leads from ex-paramilitaries spur discovery of hundreds of bodies.
By Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SAN ONOFRE, COLOMBIA – For two-plus years, Victoria Berríos suffered over the fate of her son Jose Luis Terán, who disappeared in this small ranching town on the northern coast in 2002 when Colombia's paramilitary forces ruled the region. When officials told her last year that they had found an ID card with her son's name on it in a clandestine grave, Ms. Berríos thought that finally she would be able to mourn and find peace.
(snip)

With former paramilitary fighters and witnesses now willing to speak, authorities have been inundated with information about clandestine graves of victims of Colombia's brutal conflict.

That has given hope to thousands of families. But the avalanche of reports is overwhelming authorities and their slow progress is frustrating victims' families. Officials and experts are looking to other countries to learn from their experience.

Since 2004, more than 400 bodies have been found. But much of the information about the graves is kept locked away for lack of resources.

"We are on the verge of a national emergency because of the number of graves," says Eduardo Pizarro, head of the government-appointed Reparation and Reconciliation Commission, which deals with compensation for paramilitary victims.
(snip)

Rumors that some paramilitary fighters are destroying graves in this region pressured officials to dig up sites. "It is preferable to have the remains in a box in Bogotá to having a backhoe destroying the evidence, but where there is no threat, we have to leave the graves alone for now," he says.
(snip/...)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0816/p07s02-woam.html