Colombia, 3 Congressman to Trial

[Judi Lynn]

Source: La Prensa

Colombia, 3 Congressman to Trial

Bogota, Aug 10 (Prensa Latina) Colombian Senators Mauricio Pepper, Luis Lives and Dieb Maloof will be tried by the Supreme Court for their links with former paramilitary bosses and other crimes, this institution reported Friday.

They will be tried for conspiracy to commit crimes, constraining voters and alteration of election results.

The magistrates concluded that the three senators, from parties forming the Colombian government, met with paramilitary chief Jorge 40 for him to help them guarantee their legislative election in Atlantic Coast departments.

Alfredo Gomez, president of the Court's Penal Room, told press that a great quantity of testimonial and documental evidence has been gathered to sustain the accusations.

He pointed out that many citizens were forced to vote for those senators under pressure of the paramilitary, and he announced that the maximum penalty for that crime is six years, and five for altering election results.


Read more: http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BA1A5A712-051C-4661-9193-0B0125513276%7D&language=EN

[Judi Lynn]

1. Two of the three men known as connected to the death squads:

January 24, 2006
"Swift-boating" the paramilitaries' critics

~snip~
Colombia’s paramilitary groups appear to be increasing their power, even as they “demobilize.” One key path to greater power has been Colombia’s electoral process. Through a few bribes and a lot of threats, the AUC’s bosses are guaranteeing that candidates allied to them win governorships, mayor’s offices and seats in the Congress.

After Colombia’s last congressional elections, in March 2002, AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso famously declared that the paramilitaries controlled about 30 percent of the legislature. That may have been an exaggeration at the time, but 30 percent or more could be a real possibility as the March 2006 congressional elections approach.
(snip)

Week of January 9: President Uribe attended a meeting in the heavily paramilitarized department of Córdoba, where local political leaders were to appoint a new governor to replace one forced out by corruption charges. During the meeting, two Córdoba senators, both running for re-election, got into a heated argument. In Uribe’s presence, both accused each other of having entered into “political pacts” with Córdoba-based AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso. Within a few days, Uribe ordered the attorney-general to investigate both politicians’ links to the AUC.

That week Gina Parody, a popular Bogotá congresswoman who supports Uribe but disagrees with the paramilitary negotiation process, declined invitations to run as the candidate of one of the two largest pro-Uribe political blocs (“Partido U,” coordinated by former Treasury Minister Juan Manuel Santos, and the oddly named “Cambio Radical,” headed by prominent Senator Germán Vargas Lleras, the grandson of a former president). Parody’s reason for turning them down: Both parties’ candidate lists included people “with paramilitary links.”

She named two senators running for re-election as candidates of “La U”: Dieb Maloof and Habib Merheg. Maloof, from Magdalena department, is believed to be an associate of “Jorge 40” (Rodrigo Tovar Pupo), the chief of the AUC’s powerful Northern Bloc. Merheg, from the tiny coffee-growing department of Risaralda, has been accused of paramilitary ties since 2003, according to El Tiempo. Both senators were elected in 2002 as candidates of “Colombia Viva,” a right-wing party widely seen as paramilitary-linked.
(snip)http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000206.htm

[Peace Patriot]

2. Even Colombia, rightwing dinosaur of South America, seems to have more accountability

than we do.

Here, the Supreme Court steals a presidential election, rather than punishing those who did.

Here, "conspiracy to commit crimes, constraining voters and alteration of election results" has no consequences.

Here, treason--outing a CIA agent and an entire WMD counter-proliferation network--has no consequences; the unelected, no-mandate President commutes the sentence, and Congress does nothing.

Here, the President spies on everybody, in egregious violation of the Constitution, and Congress does nothing; in fact, instead of impeachment, they endorse domestic spying, and immunize the Bush Junta for past spying crimes.

Here, the president invades another country with no cause, and slaughters 100,000 innocent people, and Congress does nothing; we vote against this war, and send people to congress to stop it, and instead they ESCALATE it, and lard Bush with $100 billion more of our tax dollars to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights.

Here, the Bush Junta tortures thousands of people, in egregious violation of the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and laws passed by Congress, and Congress does nothing, and there is no outrage, and presidential candidates couldn't be bothered to oppose it, or even mention it.

Here, the country's morals and ethics are a stinking mountain of bloody corpses--hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, the bloated corpses of the Louisiana's poor, the Bush-funded atrocities in Colombia, the dead Chavistas in the Bush-supported military coup attempt in Venezuela--and no one in officialdom seems to care, and no one takes note. At least in Colombia, they talk about it.

Here, the congress, the state legislators, state election officials, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, the leadership of both parties, and the courts have all become the lapdogs of rightwing Bushite electronic voting corporations and their extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code--the most egregious assault on American democracy ever mounted. They all conspire to keep the voters in the dark, in the land of the free, home of the brave.

Here, a Florida judge, when presented with an egregious case of election fraud--18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas 'disappeared' by ES&S voting machines containing "trade secret" code, in an election decided (for the Bushite, natch) by some 350 votes--rules in favor of ES&S, when they assert that their right to profit from our elections TRUMPS the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted, and why 18,000 votes vanished. And congress does nothing.

At least in Colombia they have a "truth and reconciliation" process. At least in Colombia they feel pressured by the awesome democracy movement in neighboring countries and throughout Latin America. At least in Colombia they have courageous and independent judges and prosecutors. At least in Colombia they have SOME ACCOUNTABILITY on the crimes of top officials. Here, we have none. None! Here, we're not finding mass graves with body parts of union leaders who were chainsawed--YET--although tortured, 'disappeared' Iraqis and other foreign victims, brutalized, deported immigrants and the corpses of Louisiana and Utah miners are most certainly piling up. And if and when the worst happens here, will we even know? If and when it happens here, what is standing in the way of complete impunity for Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and other official murderers and torturers? Nothing. Nothing stands in their way. At least in Colombia there are consequences. What is there here?

It it plainly obvious to those who know the facts that Venezuela has a far better democracy than we do. But who could have expected that, somehow, life would begin to be breathed back into democracy in Colombia, and that Colombia would have more accountability than we do? Welcome to BushWorld.