Testimony details death squad acts in Colombia

Testimony details death squad acts in Colombia
Ex-militia chief cites massacres, drug trafficking
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff | January 18, 2007

BOGOTÁ -- A former chief of Colombia's right-wing death squads testified in court this week about his role and the involvement of military and public officials in scores of massacres and assassinations of perceived political opponents.

The testimony by Salvatore Mancuso in the northwestern city of Medellín is a key step toward clarifying and assigning blame for atrocities committed in the last two decades of Colombia's ongoing civil war between insurgents and the state.

In two days, Mancuso, 48, detailed a nexus of collusion by army generals, police colonels, a state prosecutor, and politicians in planning the murders and seizing the land of scores of alleged leftists, local politicians, and peasantsaccording to lawyers and victims who were permitted to watch the closed-door sessions.

Dressed in an expensive suit and reading quickly in a matter-of-fact tone from a prepared statement, they said, Mancuso testified that his men paid the army and police in one region $400,000 a month for their cooperation, and that paramilitaries coerced voters at gunpoint to support regional and presidential candidates who favored their right-wing agenda.
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http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2007/01/18/testimony_details_death_squad_acts_in_colombia/