Colombian paramilitary member pleads guilty (in U.S.A.)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Colombian paramilitary member pleads guilty
© 2008 The Associated Press
Oct. 6, 2008, 4:24PM

HOUSTON — A member of a Colombian right-wing paramilitary group has pleaded guilty to participating in an attempt to acquire anti-aircraft missiles, grenade launchers and other powerful weapons in exchange for $25 million worth of cocaine.

Diego Alberto Ruiz Arroyave was one of 14 right-wing paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials, AUC, extradited in May to the United States in connection with the drugs-for-arms deal.

Ruiz pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Houston to conspiring to provide material support and resources to the AUC, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government, said U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle. He had originally pleaded innocent in May.

Ruiz faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 when he is sentenced on Jan. 8.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6043109.html

---

[Judi Lynn]

1. Relatives and friends of massacre victims are unhappy with these arrangements

between _Bush's and Álvaro Uribe's administrations.



Diego Alberto Ruiz Arroyave

Once he's safely secured in a U.S. prison, he cannot be tried for human rights violations in Colombia connected to death squads.

20 May 2008
Fourteen Colombian Paramilitary Leaders Extradited to the US for Drug Charges
By Jessalyn Mastrianni
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia – Fourteen top warlords, alleged members of the paramilitary and drug-trafficking group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), were extradited to the United States on Wednesday. Their charges include possession, manufacture, or distribution of cocaine, money laundering, and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Although the United States has publicly assured Colombia that it will not seek a life sentence for any of the defendants, Colombians are up in arms over the extradition. Families of more than 530 victims are upset that the 14 defendants are facing drug charges rather than murder. Sending them to stand trial in the United States is the equivalent of extraditing the truth according to the leader of Mothers of La Candelaria, a group of the victims’ families. The controversy is whether the defendants will have incentive to cooperate with Colombian authorities investigating the massacres.

The extradition was a surprise move in order to cut off criminal networks within the prisons. Human Rights Watch has called the extradition “good news” because the sentences will be 30 years under American law rather than the 8 under other law.

http://www.impunitywatch.com/impunity_watch_south_amer/2008/05/index.html

[Nambe]

2. Don´t you hate when politicians get caught with their death squads down.

On Tuesday early morning, the Colombian government sent to the United States 14 demobilized United Self-defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) leaders, who were jailed in three prisons in Bogotá, Barranquilla, and Itagüí (Antioquia department, northwest), on extradition. President Álvaro Uribe administration, facing an ongoing scandal for alleged links between lawmakers (some 30 of them already in jail, including Uribe’s cousin) and top politicians who supported him with the paramilitary militias, made the decision on the grounds of them “still committing crimes and reorganizing criminal structures”

http://en.equinoxio.org/tag/diego-alberto-ruiz-arroyave/

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's a wormy, little murderous empire he's running there for the U.S.

A whole lot of chainsaw murderers and narco trafficker/death-squad-connected dirty politicians, going all the way up to the top.

Makes you feel like singing the Colombian national anthem, doesn't it?



Francisco Santos, Vice President, Álvaro Uribe, President, Juan Manuel Santos, Defense
Minister and cousin of the Vice President, and member of family owning the country's
BIG newspaper, as well as probable candidate for the next Presidential election, if Uribe
decides it's not worth it for his party members to bribe the Senate into voting for another
extension of his Presidential term.