Human Rights Atrocities Still go Unpunished in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Human Rights Atrocities Still go Unpunished in Colombia

By Roxanna Altholz, UC Berkeley School of Law. Posted January 28, 2008.

An army general who participated in one of the country's worst massacres in recent history goes free.

The recent acquittal by a Bogotá court of General Jaime Humberto Uscátegui, the highest ranking military official ever prosecuted for human rights violations, shows that Colombia's justice system continues to let the worst perpetrators go free.

Mired in a 50-year civil war and plagued by drug trafficking, Colombia boasts some of the world's most ruthless criminals. Many of them are what one would expect: drug runners, paramilitary thugs, guerilla warlords. But many others appear to be model citizens -- senators, generals, judges -- who, by turning a blind eye, lifting a checkpoint, or providing a list of names, facilitate unspeakable atrocities. General Uscategui is such a man. In 1997, over 50 residents of Mapiripán, a small village in southern Colombia, were tortured for days, hacked to death and thrown into a nearby river. Uscategui could have stopped the massacre -- but chose not to.

I represented the families of victims of the Mapiripán massacre before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found extensive evidence of General Uscátegui's complicity. The paramilitaries reached the massacre site via an airport under Uscátegui's command. The General's troops helped the paramilitaries pass through several security checkpoints on the road to Mapiripán.

General Uscategui knew about the massacre even as it took place. One of his subordinates, Major Hernán Orozco, informed General Uscátegui that paramilitaries had entered the village and had begun to detain and torture its residents. Uscátegui ignored the warning and allowed the massacre to continue for five more days.

He then attempted to cover up his role. He ordered Orozco to falsify the documents showing he had received word of the massacre.

The Bogotá court gave Orozco, the whistleblower, a 40-year sentence. The general threatened to reveal everything he knew about the collaboration between military and paramilitary forces and walked free.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/75239/



Article from BBC Mundo, after being sent through the google translation tool:

Hallan graves of victims of paramilitary
The Colombian authorities claim to have found the graves where lie the remains of 57 people killed by right-wing paramilitaries, in the department of Meta.
The location of graves in Mapiripán (300 kilometres east of Bogota), was revealed by a former paramilitary commander.


Manuel de Jesus Piraban, alias "El Pirata," said the site on the map, as part of an agreement on the disarmament process between the government and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia.

It is believed that most of the bodies belonged to civilians from the towns of San Andres and La Cooperativa killed in the past 10 years, apparently at the hands of the "Heroes of Meta and Guaviare."

Five of the remains belong to children, and the skeleton of an adult male hands him faults, as reported by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.

Search does not stop

The authorities in Bogota seeking the bodies of over 10,000 persons believed were murdered by paramilitaries in the past 20 years.

So far only 500 have been found.

Around 31,000 paramilitaries have laid down their weapons between 2003 and 2006 as part of a disarmament process driven by the government.

These talks are aimed at ending its illegal war against leftist guerrillas, launched in the 1980's.

Note BBCMundo.com:
Http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_6599000/6599879.stm

Published: 2007/04/27 14:46:11 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

[Judi Lynn]

1. Account of what happened at the AUC massacre at Mapiripán:

IV. PARAMILITARY VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW


i]Each night they kill groups of five to six defenseless people, who are cruelly and monstrously massacred after being tortured. The screams of humble people are audible, begging for mercy and asking for help.

– Judge Leonardo Iván Cortés, Mapiripán, Meta

July 1997


Mapiripán, Meta: From July 15 through July 20, 1997, the ACCU seized the town of Mapiripán, Meta, killed at least thirteen people, and threatened others with death. An investigation by human rights groups concluded that paramilitaries had arrived in the region via chartered airplane, which landed at the San José del Guaviare airport days before the massacre. This case also illustrates the deadly results of the army and police policy of acquiescence in paramilitary killings. Local army and police units ignored repeated phone calls from a civilian judge in the area asking for help to stop the slayings. At dawn on July 15, an estimated 200 heavily-armed ACCU members arrived and began rounding up local authorities and forcing them to accompany them. Among those they searched for were peasants who had taken part in a 1996 department-wide protest against coca eradication and the government’s failure to provide viable economic alternatives for the region. ACCU men detained residents and people arriving by boat, took them to the local slaughterhouse, then bound, tortured, and executed them by slitting their throats. The first person killed, Antonio María Herrera, known as “Catumare,” was hung from a hook, and ACCU members quartered his body, throwing the pieces into the Guaviare River. At least two bodies — those of Sinaí Blanco, a boatman, and Ronald Valencia, the airstrip manager — weredecapitated.103 Judge Leonardo Iván Cortés reported hearing the screams of the people they brought to the slaughterhouse to interrogate, torture, and kill throughout the five days the ACCU remained in the area. In one of the missives he sent to various regional authorities during the massacre, he wrote: “Each night they kill groups of five to six defenseless people, who are cruelly and monstrously massacred after being tortured. The screams of humble people are audible, begging for mercy and asking for help.”104 ACCU leader Carlos Castaño took responsibility for the massacre, and told reporters that an ACCU “shock front” of seventy men executed thirteen people, and threw some bodies in the Guaviare River. Arriving only days after the ACCU left, authorities located five bodies, though the ICRC estimated to reporters that as many as twenty more may have been killed and thrown into the Guaviare River.105 Castaño denied reports of torture, yet promised “many more Mapiripans” for Colombia in subsequent press interviews.106 Hundreds of people fled the region, including Judge Cortés, who was forced to leave Colombia with his family because of threats on his life. The Attorney General’s Office is currently investigating the ACCU’s involvement in the massacre and hasissued arrest warrants for Castaño and two of his men for planning and carrying out the killings.107 The Internal Affairs continues to investigate official involvement.108

Despite Judge Cortés’s eight telephone pleas for help along with the calls of at least two others, neither the police nor the army’s “Joaquín París” Battalion in nearby San José reacted until the ACCU had left town. As a result of their internal investigation, the army put Seventh Brigade Commander Gen. Jaime Humberto Uscátegui on administrative duty for failing to act promptly to stop the massacre and detain those responsible. The armed forces also claimed to be investigating Maj. Hernán Orozco Castro, acting commander of the “Joaquín París Battalion, Maj. Horacio Galeano, and Capt. Luis Carlos López. In an interview, General Bonett told Human Rights Watch that General Uscátegui would not be promoted and that his career was over. However, Human Rights Watch subsequently learned that General Uscátegui was returned to active duty without any apparent punishment. It is also noteworthy that the army, which controls the San José airport, claimed that it had not registered the arrival of the ACCU’s chartered airplane despite a policy of registering every arriving plane and passenger, including Human Rights Watch representatives during a May 1997 visit.109

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/colombia/Colom989-04.htm



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


Google translation from the Spanish text:

THE COOPERATIVE, Colombia. Police collected the remains of mass graves of tens of
Peasants who were killed by paramilitary groups of extreme right.

BOGOTA | AFP-AP

We found the remains of 78 victims of the paramilitary wing.

The Colombian authorities found fifty mass graves with
Remnants of 78 alleged victims of paramilitary wing, informed the
OTP.

Mass graves were found thanks to information provided by former chiefs
Paramilitaries, including Manuel Jesus Pirabán, aka Pirate, demobilized
Within the peace process by the Government and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia
(AUC).

The paramilitary leaders who benefited from the so-called Justice and Peace Law Framework
Legal process of disarmament of the extreme-right, which provides a penalty
Up to eight years in prison but were committed heinous crimes or
Against humanity, provided that the confessions and are committed to repairing the
Victims.

They were exhumed 57 corpses on Thursday in a village in the municipality of
Mapiripán, in the department of Meta.

The skeletal remains were found, five of whom are minors,
Correspond to peasants in the area of La Cooperativa, which were finalised
By block paramilitary Heroes of Meta and Guaviare.

Among the bodies are those of two women 15 and 17 years, for whose murder
The Colombian State faces a process of the Inter-American Court
Human Rights stressed the prosecutor Mario Iguarán.

Iguarán said that the finding shows that "those stimulated
Paramilitary not bought their safety but that funded terror. "

An official of the National Unity for Justice and Peace OTP
Mapiripán assured that there would be many more dead buried in graves
Common. "Several of the residents say that this area is full of dead,
Including fighters, residents and passersby, "he said.

The paramilitaries are accused by human rights organizations of
Some 9,000 homicides over two decades of fighting against guerrillas
Leftists.
Alan Garcia with special powers.
LIMA | Reuters-AP

http://www.proserec.com/Internacionales.html

[Peace Patriot]

2. U.S. citizens ought to be up in arms about the Bush Junta's support of the Colombian

government--billions of our tax dollars pouring into that country, where heinous murderers go free every day, not just this one--many--and not just old murders--on-going murders of union leaders, peasant farmers, political leftists, human rights workers, journalists and others. Colombia has the most foul-smelling government in South America.

Amnesty international statistics show that 92% of the violence against union organizers in Colombia is committed by the official government security forces and by their associated rightwing paramilitaries.

But most U.S. citizens don't know this. It is ignored by our corporate war profiteering "news" monopolies, who pick on someone like Hugo Chavez, who has harmed no one, who is law-abiding and democratic, and they try to demonize him because he wants to use the country's oil profits for the benefit of the poor. Perish the thought.

Thank you for this post, Judi! Now some of us know that mass murder in Colombia goes unpunished, like mass murder in Iraq. Whistleblowers go to jail, or live in fear, while hideous criminals not only go free, but run the government, in Colombia, and here.

It's hard to face what our own government has become. It must be hard for well-meaning folks in Colombia as well. I pity us all. May we live to see democracy and justice triumph, there and here!