Feared far-right Colombian warlord extradited to U.S.

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CBC News

Feared far-right Colombian warlord extradited to U.S.
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | 5:10 AM ET Comments2Recommend6CBC News
Colombia extradited one of its most feared right wing paramilitary leaders to the United States early Wednesday to face drug trafficking charges, the government said.

Carlos Mario Jimenez was flown to Washington on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration plane, according to President Alvaro Uribe's office.The announcement came just hours after Colombia's top judicial panel overturned a Supreme Court decision that had temporarily blocked the extradition.

The Colombian Supreme Court had ruled last month that Jimenez should not leave the country until he has confessed to crimes he committed as the leader of illegal far-right militias and paid reparations to his victims.

On Tuesday, the judiciary's high council overturned that decision.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/05/07/colombia-warlord.html

---

Carlos Mario Jimenez ("Macaco")





Members of his death squad visiting a village, being arrested

[TygrBright]

1. Oh, goodie! Finally the GOPpies have a VIABLE candidate to run...

...when McCain's age and health catch up with him.

Betcha this guy will just clean up the O'Reilly/Limbaugh vote!

Show trial: A week or two, ending in acquittal.

Rehab period: Another week or two in the press, combined with a few baby-kissing appearances and speeches to RW audiences.

I expect the announcement that McCain's health won't allow him to continue running, and this guy's entry into the race sometime in mid- to late-June.

prophetically,
Bright

[texshelters]

2. I'm surprised

All that propaganda that told us that it was a Narco-guerrilla war was a big lie. This is proof that it is a right-wing drug war as well. The government also has links to the drug dealers.

I'm surprised the United States is admitting that the drug trade is not just a guerrilla trade.

Tex Shelters

[PATRICK]

5. So his masters issured a recall?

I take it he will get better and more silent treatment here in the US. Hey, maybe even a Bush pardon and a job at Blackwater?

[Judi Lynn]

8. Without a doubt, he'd be in familiar company!

This right-wing death squad crap is big business. Look at a man they brought to Colombia to TRAIN these ghouls:

Yair Klein
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yair Klein (Hebrew: יאיר קליין‎; also known as Jair Klein) is an Israeli and a former lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army, who established a private mercenary company called Spearhead Ltd.

Through Spearhead Ltd, Klein provided arms and training to armed forces in South America.<1>

Klein and his company have been accused of training the death-squads of drug traffickers and right-wing militias in Colombia in the 1980s.<2>

Klein was convicted by judicial authorities in Colombia for training several members of Colombian paramilitary groups and the militias of drug traffickers such as Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar Gaviria in 1987.

Klein was convicted in 2001 by a Colombian court, and the Colombian government made unsuccessful attempts to obtain his extradition from Israel. In a 2007 interview with Caracol TV, Klein claimed that he was sent to Colombia by request of the National Police in order to train its members, and stated that he was willing to go back and help destroy the FARC guerrillas.

He also criticized the demobilization of the paramilitaries, saying it was "stupid" to do so while the guerrillas remained a threat. <3>

Yair Klein spent 16 months in a Sierra Leone prison between 1999 and 2000 on charges that he was smuggling arms to rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yair_Klein



Yair Klein

[texshelters]

11. That explains it...

Yes, I buy that.

Tex Shelters

[EdieUNN]

3. ATTENTION ADMINISTRATER

SORRY TO HITCH A RIDE ON THIS MOST WORTHY OF TOPICS. I'M NEW AND AFTER REPLYING TO SEVERAL TOPICS I'M STILL NOT ALLOWED TO USE A NEW THREAD OR MY JOURNAL.
DU ADM. PLEASE RESPOND ASAP. THANK YOU. EDIEUNN

[Judi Lynn]

6. Hi, EdieUNN.

Welcome to D.U. :hi:

[BreweryYardRat]

9. I think you have to hit somewhere between 10-100 posts.

I'm not sure which -- it's a way to filter out Republican trolls and disruptors.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Colombia extradites first paramilitary boss to U.S.

Colombia extradites first paramilitary boss to U.S.

By Hugh Bronstein
Reuters
Wednesday, May 7, 2008; 10:56 AM

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia extradited Carlos "Macaco" Jimenez to the United States on Wednesday, the first time the government has sent a former right-wing paramilitary boss to face U.S. justice for drug trafficking.
(snip)

Colombia accused Jimenez of violating the terms of the peace accord by ordering crimes from his jail cell.

His extradition came as Democrats in the U.S. Congress demand that conservative President Alvaro Uribe do more to control paramilitary influence over criminal gangs before the lawmakers can back a U.S.-Colombia free trade deal.
(snip)

Funded by the country's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade, the "paras" soon grew more powerful than their original benefactors. They terrorized this Andean country in the name of fighting Marxist insurgents, using massacres and torture to intimidate rural populations long neglected by the state.

Human rights groups have criticized the peace deal for being too lenient with former militia leaders, but not all rights activists welcomed Wednesday's extradition.

"What are we going to learn about severe human rights violations that occurred in Colombia now that 'Macaco' has been extradited?" said Lisa Haugaard, head of the Latin America Working Group, a Washington-based human rights organization.

"Extradition can be a useful tool, but we need to know about the full scope of the horror that occurred in Colombia," she said. "We need to know who the 'paras' worked with and where the bodies are buried."

Uribe's international standing has been hurt by a scandal in which dozens of members of his congressional coalition are being investigated for suspected illegal dealings with paramilitary groups.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/07/AR2008050701025_pf.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Placing this mass murdering criminal in the U.S. on a "drug" charge removes him from having to answer for the massacres he ordered and executed during his career as a right-wing mass murdering monster in Colombia who tortured and destroyed, countless human lives.

[old guy]

7. Guess this means it will be OK to sign the NAFTA deal!

After all, they let us have this guy so it must mean that all the trouble there is over. I detect the odor of rat.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Reminds one of the Bible story of the crew of a ship throwing Jonah overboard to appease

God during a storm.

I'm sure you're right. You notice he's the FIRST right-wing death squad guy they've allowed to go to the U.S., too, although these monsters have been terrorizing the Colombian countryside for ages, killing off union leaders, invading small towns and using chain saws to terrorize and torture living people, dressing dead peasants as FARC to make it look as if they had won another war against them, etc., etc.

They were given free reign. It DOES sound odd when they actually start putting them on trial.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Gee, I wonder who in Bush's DoJ is going to prosecute him and botch the prosecution?

Or, do they want him deep in a U.S. dungeon where he can be "controlled"?

In either case, I nominate Bushbot U.S. Attorney Thomas Muvilhil in Miami, for the Bush Cartel go-to guy on this one. He's currently making headlines (their whole point) with his "showcase" prosecution of a couple of Bush-CIA patsies for "failing to register with the U.S. Attorney General as agents of a foreign government," in the bizarre "suitcase full of money" story. (Two-Jaguars-in-the-driveway Miami "businessman" gets caught trying to take $800,000 in cash into Argentina, and later turns up as rat for Muvilhil's accusations that the money was intended for the leftist presidential campaign of Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, from Hugo Chavez.)

This extradition is not good news. It is very bad news. The rampant rightwing Murder, Inc., in Colombia is being LAUNDERED.

[Joanne98]

13. He won't get a fair trial here. Send him to Venezuela!

[conspirator]

14. Now he is going to recover at bush ranch, get new equipment from the CIA and be redeployed in

Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

15. Colombia justifies swift extradition of paramilitary boss

Colombia justifies swift extradition of paramilitary boss

May 7, 2008, 19:31 GMT
Bogota - The Colombian government justified Wednesday the swift extradition to the United States of paramilitary boss Carlos Mario Jimenez.

Jimenez, known with the alias 'Macaco,' was handed over to US federal agents in the early hours of Wednesday, just a few hours after a Colombian court lifted an order that prevented his extradition.

Shortly after the court decision was known, Jimenez was taken out of the Combita top-security prison, in the central Colombian province of Boyaca. He was taken by helicopter to a military airfield in Bogota, where officers of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) were waiting.

According to Colombian authorities, the DEA plane made a stopover in Miami en route to Washington, where Jimenez is to answer to drug- related charges in court.

Colombian Interior and Justice Minister Carlos Holguin said that the extradition was swift because of Jimenez's record. Colombian officials argue that he is a dangerous individual.

More:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1404053.php/Colombia_justifies_swift_extradition_of_paramilitary_boss

(Of COURSE he's a "dangerous individual." That's why the fascist Uribe government let him romp all over Colombia, slaughtering as many leftists or suspected leftists as he could handle. They struck while the iron was hot. To even pretend to claim ignorance of his mass murdering history would be more than anyone could swallow.

Everyone who spends a moment or two researching will discover the Colombian military has worked hand-in-hand with the death squads forever. It's certainly common knowledge. The military is known to guard villages, letting no one in or out while the death squads go in and wipe them all out, taking DAYS at times to properly terrorize and torture their victims, some of that being done with chain saws on the living. (Occassionally the military have been known to go right in there with them, sometimes wearing death squad clothes. It's on record, as in the massacre in 1997, at El Aro.) Making a public display of their torture and dismemberment has been one of their hallmarks, done publicly to instill ultimate terror.

Yeah, these guys just might be "dangerous individuals," Sherlock! But you knew that years ago. So did everyone else.)

[Judi Lynn]

16. Colombia massacre troops jailed

Page last updated at 08:22 GMT, Thursday, 8 May 2008 09:22 UK
Colombia massacre troops jailed

A Colombian army colonel and 14 other soldiers have received prison sentences of up to 54 years for the killing of 10 undercover police officers in 2006. Former Lt Col Bayron Carvajal was given 54 years for ordering the ambush near the southern town of Jamundi.

The police were lured to a medical centre by an informant who told them there was cocaine hidden there. When the undercover officers arrived, they and the informant were shot dead. No drugs were ever found.

Carvajal, who was not at the scene of the massacre, said he thought his troops were attacking leftist rebels who were working with drug traffickers.
(snip)

The dead officers belonged to an elite unit of Colombia's judicial investigative police, and had trained in the US.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7389430.stm

[Judi Lynn]

17. Former colonel gets 54-year term for massacre in Colombia

Former colonel gets 54-year term for massacre in Colombia
By CESAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer
Wed May 7, 11:21 PM ET

CALI, Colombia - A judge on Wednesday gave a 54-year prison term to a cashiered army lieutenant colonel who was convicted of ordering the massacre of 10 elite anti-drug police in an ambush on a lonely country road.

Judge Edmundo Lopez also slapped near-maximum sentences of 52 years on the unit's second-in-command, and 50 years each on the other 13 soldiers convicted of participating in the May 22, 2006 slaughter.

A motive was not determined in the case though senior police officials told The Associated Press they believe former Lt. Col. Byron Carvajal and his troops had been protecting a drug lord.
(snip)

There were numerous attempts to subvert the trial, including an auxiliary prosecutor's offer to help the defense in exchange for more than US$400,000 (euro260,000), senior police officials and prosecutors familiar with the case told The Associated Press. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing investigations, said the bribe was never paid and the prosecutor was removed from the case.

"One thing is clear. It was a massacre related to organized criminals," chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran told the AP in February.

Carvajal was found to have ordered the ambush in the town of Jamundi in western Colombia, where an informant had told police they would find at least 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of cocaine at a psychiatric center. When police pulled up, the soldiers cut them down with 420 bullets and seven grenades. No drugs were found and the informant was also gunned down.

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080508/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_tainted_army

[Judi Lynn]

18. CNN: Colombian warlord pleads not guilty to drug trafficking

updated 8:43 p.m. EDT, Wed May 7, 2008
Colombian warlord pleads not guilty to drug trafficking

From Terry Frieden
CNN



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A leading Colombian paramilitary leader pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges Wednesday in a U.S. court after his extradition from Colombia.
(snip)

It's really a very hard blow for thousands of people in Colombia," said Ivan Cepeda. "This man is guilty of many forced disappearances, of having had important connections with political and economic sectors in many parts of the country. And now it is necessary to make extra effort to ensure that this justice and this truth can be obtained in other countries."

Several relatives said they were hoping that Jimenez might reveal information that would lead them to the bodies of their loved ones.

"Macaco had given me a little light of hope that he'd tell me where my dear ones were, but today we don't know what will happen," said Amparo Cano, a member of the victims' association.

"I take it with sadness and anger because they passed over the heads of the victims, and we have been the people most affected," said Alejandra Valbin, another member of the group.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/07/colombia.extradition/index.html

[0rganism]

19. Nice one. The guy's responsible for maybe hundreds of murders? but he walks cos he smuggled coke?

If he gets acquitted on the drug charges, I wouldn't be surprised to see the bushistas give him political asylum.

What bullshit.

[Judi Lynn]

20. COLOMBIA: "Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"

COLOMBIA: "Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, May 8 (IPS) - "With Uribe, we thought: this is the guy who is going to change the country," the 41-year-old fisherwoman told IPS.

That is why her fishing and farming village of 800 people in the central Colombian region of Magdalena Medio decided overwhelmingly to vote for current President Álvaro Uribe in the 2002 presidential elections, when he first ran.

The woman agreed to talk to IPS on the condition that she be asked neither her name (we will call her "L.") nor the name of her village.
(snip)

The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.

The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used "threats," said L.

"If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be," the villagers were told ominously.

And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: "This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses," they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.

"One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe," she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42290

[Judi Lynn]

21. More on voter intimidation by the pro-Uribe death squads: Paramilitaries Aggressively Campaign for V

ELECTIONS-COLOMBIA: Paramilitaries Aggressively Campaign for Votes
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Mar 10 (IPS) - A group of sons and daughters of victims of the "dirty war" in Colombia urged voters not to vote in Sunday's legislative elections for candidates on lists that include alleged members of paramilitary militias, their accomplices or their front men.

When parliamentary Deputy Muriel Benito-Revollo was a candidate in the 2002 elections in the province of Sucre on the country's Caribbean coast, local paramilitary chief ‘Rodrigo Cadena' took an active approach in supporting her campaign.

'Cadena', who controlled Benito-Revollo's hometown of San Onofre, among other areas, called the local residents, including the members of the town council, to the central square.

He then placed slips of paper with the names of each town councillor into a bag, and drew out two of the names.

"He said that if Señora Benito-Revollo was not elected, he would kill those two town councillors, as well as a few people from San Onofre who he would choose at random," philosopher Iván Cepeda told IPS.

Iván is the son of Manuel Cepeda, a journalist and senator of the leftist Patriotic Union party, which was destroyed by a campaign of assassination of its leaders, including Manuel, who was murdered in 1994.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32464

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

COLOMBIA: Speaking Out Against Paramilitaries - Before Fleeing Again
By Constanza Vieira

PAJONAL, Colombia, Dec 11 (IPS) - Even his elderly aunt Jacinta, who raised him, is urging him to leave town. This will be the second time Santander Blanco has had to flee for his life. The first time he was forced to leave after refusing to vote for the candidates to the Colombian legislature imposed by the ultra-rightwing paramilitary militias.

That time, he spent three years hiding out in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena in northern Colombia, two hours away by road, and lost everything he had gained in his years of work as a civil servant. But he returned home.

Now he will escape once again to save his life. But this time he decided to speak out before leaving.

He did so before 1,300 people in a public hearing that the Senate human rights committee convened in late November in the municipal capital, San Onofre, in the northwestern Caribbean coastal province of Sucre.

During the hearing, he accused Mayor Jorge Blanco (no relation) of paramilitary ties, in front of the provincial police chiefs. The mayor had won the elections in which he was the only candidate. The regional legislators were arrested in mid-November on orders of the Supreme Court, accused of forming part of paramilitary bands.

More:
http://wwww.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35804

[Judi Lynn]

22. Colombia: AUC's "Macaco" behind Putumayo mass grave

Colombia: AUC's "Macaco" behind Putumayo mass grave
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Mon, 05/07/2007 - 02:30.

Colombian prosecutor general Mario Iguarán confirmed that several foreigners, at least three from Ecuador, are among the 105 presumed paramilitary victims whose bodies were exhumed from a mass grave near La Hormiga, Putumayo department, May 5. Another 106 bodies were exhumed from 65 common graves in the area over the past ten months. Ecuadoran families had been inquiring about loved ones who had disappeared across the border. Most of the victims, who investigators believe were killed between 1999 and 2001, had been dismembered before burial. With these finds, the number of bodies of presumed paramilitary victims exhumed nationwide since the beginning of 2006 to 900. Iguaran’s office estimates 10,000 Colombians lie in unmarked graves across the country, now in its fifth decade of civil war. "It has surprised us, despite the fact that we are in the middle of a conflict," said Iguarán, adding that his office has reports of 3,000 common graves from victims' families and other sources. The investigation is being carried out by the Judicial and Investigative Police Directorate (DIJIIN). Radio Caracol cited an internal report it said identified those responsible for the Putumayo graves as Carlos Mario Jiménez, alias "Macaco," leader of the Central Bolívar Bloc of the United Colombian Self-Defense Forces (AUC), and his second-in-command Arnolfo Santamaría Galindo, alias "Pipa." (El Espectador, Bogota; AP, May 6)

http://ww4report.com/node/3778

[Judi Lynn]

23. COLOMBIA: Death Threats for Tracing Paramilitary

COLOMBIA: Death Threats for Tracing Paramilitary Expansion
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Sep 10 (IPS) - Death threats have been received by members of a think tank in the Colombian capital that published a new book describing the expansion of ultra-rightwing paramilitary militias in several provinces of Colombia and their alliance with local politicians.

"I never threw stones. I’m no good at that at all," said Laura Bonilla, director of the Armed Conflict Observatory of the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, which published the study in Spanish, titled "Parapolitics: The Route of Paramilitary Expansion and Political Accords".

"Your writings are very deep, you piece of scum," says the latest death threat received at Bonilla’s work email address, which also accuses her of having been a rebellious "stone-throwing" student. The message is dated Sept. 6, the day the book was released.

The return address is: [e-mail]. The AUC (United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia) is the paramilitary umbrella group that completed a partial demobilisation process last year, as a result of controversial negotiations with the rightwing government of Álvaro Uribe. But the "Bloque Capital" faction continues to operate in Bogotá.
(snip)

The researchers taking part in the study produced papers showing how the different AUC fronts achieved "dominance and influence" in Medellín, Colombia’s second-biggest city; Bogotá; the central provinces of Cundinamarca and Meta; the northern coastal provinces of Córdoba, Sucre and Magdalena Grande; the eastern provinces of Casanare and Norte de Santander; and the western province of Valle del Cauca.

The study also has a special chapter on the effects of AUC violence on indigenous people.

The ombudsman’s office’s early warning system sent out an alert in July that 42 percent of the country’s municipalities are at "electoral risk" and that nearly two-thirds of these are at "high electoral risk".

"Electoral risk" refers to factors that affect the elections and lead to exceptionally strong performance by a specific party; an unusually large number of blank ballots; unusually high or low turn-out; political violence; threats; or murders of candidates.
(snip)

During the paramilitary expansion that has occurred since the 1980s, 4.5 million hectares of prime land in Colombia has violently changed hands, leading to the displacement of between three and four million people.

This was not "a conspiracy among a group of criminals It was a social and political mobilisation of the country in 12 departments (provinces), which changed the political map," León Valencia, director of the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, said at the book launch.

"And they had a decisive influence in many other departments as well. They contributed 1.75 million votes in the 2002 presidential elections, and 1.85 million in 2006," he said.

The paramilitary militias back Uribe and in certain regions forced entire communities to vote for him, although the president would probably have been elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 without that support.

The Nuevo Arco Iris study began to be conducted long before the "parapolitics" scandal triggered an investigation and the arrest of a number of politicians.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39202