(Colombia's President) Uribe's cousin allegedly tied to death squads

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Houston Chronicle/Associated Press

July 12, 2007, 1:01AM
Uribe's cousin allegedly tied to death squads
The Colombian president's relative among 3 senators being investigated


Associated Press

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Colombia's Supreme Court has opened a preliminary investigation into President Alvaro Uribe's cousin and two senators over alleged ties to the country's far-right death squads, a court spokesman said Wednesday.
(snip)

The scandal has inched ever closer to Uribe, also claiming his former foreign minister, who resigned after her brother was jailed on charges of working hand-in-hand with the paramilitaries, known as the AUC.

Twelve politicians are in jail on charges ranging from arranging death squad murders to funneling money to the AUC, which the U.S. State Department calls a "terrorist organization."

A key witness in the scandal has been former paramilitary Jairo Castillo. Castillo said in April that he knew of two meetings between Mario Uribe and local paramilitary leaders in 1998. According to Castillo — who fled Colombia fearing he would be killed — Mario Uribe was looking for help from the paramilitaries to buy cheap land on the Caribbean coast.





Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4961562.html

---

Mario Uribe, cousin of the Colombian President

[Judi Lynn]

1. Article in which both the names of Uribe's cousin, Mario Uribe, and the paramilitary

who has implicated him in death squad activities:

~snip~
Colombia's modern-day paramilitary movement began in Antioquia in the 1980s and expanded with the help of landowners, drug traffickers, senior military officials and an assortment of companies, including the banana firms that operate in the Uraba region. The illegal militias, operating alongside the military, ejected Marxist rebels from key regions of the state and, by the late 1990s, had spread across much of Colombia, carrying out massacres of peasants and assassinating leftist politicians.

As part of its probe, the Supreme Court will soon send a team of investigators to Canada to interview a paramilitary turncoat, Jairo Castillo, whose testimony has already helped put eight members of Congress behind bars. Investigators expect Castillo, who received political asylum, to provide a raft of new details, including allegations that Mario Uribe and a group of paramilitary members met to plan how to wrest control of private lands from owners not tied to paramilitary commanders.

Castillo, in a telephone interview earlier this month, said he was present at two meetings in 1998 attended by the paramilitary members and the senator. "What we knew about him," Castillo said, "was that he was a strong collaborator of the paramilitaries in that zone."
(snip)

Sen. Uribe heads a party allied with the president, Democratic Colombia, which had five lawmakers in Congress until investigators began uncovering links its members had with death squads. Two of them - -- Sen. Alvaro Garcia and Rep. Eric Morris -- are now in jail. A third, Sen. Miguel Alfonso de la Espriella, is being investigated by the court for having been among a group of 11 lawmakers to sign a pact with paramilitary members in 2001 that called for them to "re-found the fatherland." (snip)

http://www.mapinc.org/tlcnews/v07/n483/a06.htm?357

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

It would only be right for the same right-leaning posters who graced the place with impressive opinions on Venezuelans calling their country the "fatherland," to do their duty and show up on this thread to spew over this same word choice by Colombian right-wingers.

[Robbien]

2. go and buy land for this person, and we'll have our own politician,'" Castillo said.

Sorry to think that these are the guys we call our best friends in SA.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Cousin of Colombia's Uribe probed for "para" links

Cousin of Colombia's Uribe probed for "para" links
Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:23PM EDT

Featured Broker sponsored link
By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A scandal linking political allies of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to right-wing death squads deepened on Wednesday when the Supreme Court opened an investigation into his first cousin, Senator Mario Uribe.
The president's international standing has already been damaged by the scandal in which his former security chief and some of his closest allies in Congress have been jailed and are awaiting trial for supporting paramilitary militias.

"The Supreme Court opened a preliminary investigation against senators Mario Uribe, Zulema Jattin and Julio Manzur for possible links to illegal armed groups," said a spokesman for the court.
(snip)

The scandal began late last year when members of Congress admitted they had signed a document agreeing to support paramilitary groups formed in the 1980s to help defend drug lords and cattle ranchers against left-wing rebels.

Since the 1990s the "paras" have grown rich on Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade and notorious for massacring peasants suspected of leftist sympathies.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1131566820070712

[Judi Lynn]

4. Colombia: another killing at San Josecito Peace Community

Colombia: another killing at San Josecito Peace Community
Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 07/14/2007 - 23:17.
From the Colombia Support Network (CSN), July 14:

On July 13, 2007 at 12:15 PM two men who had the previous day identified themselves as members of the "Black Eagles" paramilitary organization, stopped a public transport vehicle, forced Peace Community member Dairo Torres out of the vehicle, and shot and killed him. Dairo was the coordinator of the Alto Bonito humanitarian zone, located about four hours walk from the San Josecito Peace Community, since 2004. He was a serious, responsible leader in the hamlets in the San Josecito area.

Dairo was murdered less than two minutes drive from a police checkpoint on the road between Apartadó and San Jose. His murderers had been seen at about 9:10 AM talking to and sitting next to the police at the checkpoint. It is clear that the police were complicit in the murder of Dairo.
(snip/...)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/4224

[Judi Lynn]

5. Uribe's Colombia and U.S. Money

Uribe's Colombia and U.S. Money
José María Rodríguez González
July 13, 2007

Uribe's "popularity" is the result of the thousands of dollars he spends in media promotion.

It seems that Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, will never run out of tricks to assure billions of American dollars without solving Colombia's chronic troubles. Recently, he was praising the Iraq war and his best friend, Mr. George Bush. Now, when Mr. Bush's star is fading, Uribe throws an award to Bill Clinton and a pat on the back to the Democrats.

Uribe's latest overture will doubtless allow his propaganda team to plant another adulatory editorial in the Washington Post or an article in the National Review, but in reality his overture to Clinton and the Democrats is as insincere as any of his previous tricks: the Colombia Plan, Patriot Plan, FTA, and whatever else he has been able to conjure up to keep the patronage flowing from his favorite welfare state, the United States.

Mr. Bush and the neocons bought Uribe's promise to lead the charge against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and strengthen American influence in South America. Not for the first time, the neocons were dead wrong. With the same inability to understand internal politics that led the U.S. into a catastrophic civil war in Iraq, the neocon strategists ignored the reality of what is going on in Colombia today — and what is likely to go on in the coming years.

Uribe, who famously fought against the extradition of his crony, drug lord Pablo Escobar, has sponsored legislation in Colombia to limit the sentences of confessed paramilitary narco-terrorists to a maximum of five to eight years. This means that, thanks to Uribe (and considering time served) some unreconstructed death squad killers will be out in 22 months, free to re-enter Colombian society, enjoy their piled-up wealth, join the FTA and become political leaders! This virtually insures that the U.S. flag-bearer in Latin America will be a country rife with entrenched corruption, terrorism, guerrilla warfare and booming narco-politics.

More:
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2860.cfm