rabs (267 posts) Fri May-01-09 02:01 AM
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Colombian Militia Boss: We Burned Hundreds of Bodies
Edited on Fri May-01-09 02:10 AM by rabs
Another horror story out of Colombia; the first mention I have seen of crematoria set up by rightwing paramilitaries (who have been linked to President Uribe) to burn the bodies of their victims. The irony is that today Uribe met with the pope, the former Hitler Youth pontiff, in Rome.
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Mancuso said the burning of the bodies “was a favor that (now-deceased AUC founder) Carlos Castaño was doing for the authorities.”
He said the decision came after a meeting where politicians, senior military officers and other notables asked the AUC to dispose of victims’ bodies as a way of holding down the number of deaths that could be attributed to the militias.
That discussion took place at a time when evidence of militia massacres was coming to light, according to Mancuso, who said the militias dug up their buried victims and cremated them in ovens set up near the Venezuelan border.
Another former AUC member, Jorge Ivan Laverde, testified last October that the first of the ovens was built in 2001 in Norte de Santander province to incinerate 98 bodies.
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:p41FkTJpZU8J:www.laht.com/article.asp%3FArticleId%3D333321%26CategoryId%3D12393+Mancuso+burned+bodies&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ushttp://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x14640The link has been removed, but cached already, and loads very slowly. Here's a longer portion of the text:
Colombian Militia Boss: We Burned Hundreds of Bodies
BOGOTA – The erstwhile commander of Colombia’s right-wing militias said that his men systematically burned hundreds of their victims at the behest of officials and military brass who sought to downplay the level of violence in the Andean nation.
Salvatore Mancuso, extradited to the United States a year ago to face drug charges, made the admission while testifying via videolink from Washington.
A portion of the session, which featured the former head of the AUC militia federation answering questions submitted by families of the paramilitaries’ victims, was aired in Colombia on RCN television.
Mancuso said the burning of the bodies “was a favor that (now-deceased AUC founder) Carlos Castaño was doing for the authorities.”
He said the decision came after a meeting where politicians, senior military officers and other notables asked the AUC to dispose of victims’ bodies as a way of holding down the number of deaths that could be attributed to the militias.
That discussion took place at a time when evidence of militia massacres was coming to light, according to Mancuso, who said the militias dug up their buried victims and cremated them in ovens set up near the Venezuelan border.
Another former AUC member, Jorge Ivan Laverde, testified last October that the first of the ovens was built in 2001 in Norte de Santander province to incinerate 98 bodies.
Mancuso was turned over to U.S. authorities last May along with 14 other leading figures in the AUC.
Militia victims, human rights groups and the Colombian government’s inspector general expressed concerns that the extradition of the warlords would stymie efforts to establish a full and accurate record of their crimes in the Andean nation.
Under the terms of the 2005 Peace and Justice Law, pushed through Colombia’s Congress by President Alvaro Uribe to regulate the militiamen’s reinsertion into society, AUC fighters were promised they would spend no more than eight years in detention.
In exchange, the paramilitaries were required to give a full accounting of their crimes and make some kind of restitution to victims and their families.
A number of the 15 men extradited to the United States last year had provided valuable information, directing authorities to mass graves and exposing politicians’ links to the militias.
The AUC demobilized more than 31,000 of its fighters between the end of 2003 and mid-2006 as part of the peace process with Uribe’s rightist administration, but the militia federation’s involvement in the Colombian political system remains under investigation.
AUC penetration of Colombia’s public life came to light in November 2006 when the “parapolitica” scandal broke, leading to the arrests of dozens of politicians, most of them allies of Uribe, who is now in his second four-year term. EFE
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