Colombian paramilitary warlords extradited

Source: Miami Herald

Colombian paramilitary warlords extradited
Posted on Tue, May. 13, 2008
BY TYLER BRIDGES
tbridges@MiamiHerald.com

In a surprise move, the Colombian government early Tuesday morning extradited 14 notorious paramilitary warlords to the United States, where they are wanted on cocaine-trafficking charges.
(snip)

The paramilitary leaders, Holguín said, continued to engage in criminal activities behind bars in Colombia and failed to make reparations to victims, in violation of a 2003 pact under which they surrendered and received lenient terms.

The massive extradition comes at a time when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is facing accusations that he and senior leaders of his party -- including many members of Congress -- have had close ties with the right-wing paramilitary leaders. Uribe was expected to address the Colombian people Tuesday morning to explain what was happening and why.

Among those extradited were Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (better known as ''Jorge 40''), Diego Fernando Murillo (``Don Berna''), Hernán Giraldo, alias ``Pablo Sevillano,'' and Ramiro ''Cuco'' Vanoy.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/531206.html

White House Hopeful Colombia Extradition Can Boost Trade Pact
(05-13-081118ET)

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The White House is hopeful that Colombia's extradition of paramilitary warlords to the U.S. can help lift the Colombia trade agreement's prospects in Congress.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the administration is still " dismayed" that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hasn't allowed lawmakers to vote on the trade pact, a situation that may doom the deal.

But Colombia's decision to extradite 14 leaders of illegal militias - many accused of drug trafficking - to the U.S. could ease some lawmakers' concerns that Bogota isn't doing enough to fight the spread of drugs.

"We can certainly hope that this would persuade Congress, the Democratic leaders in Congress, specifically Speaker Pelosi, that she would see this as yet another sign, but I would point out to you that this is not the first time that these types of extraditions have taken place," Perino said.

The House voted last month to suspend a 90-day deadline Congress was facing to hold a vote on the Colombian trade deal. Democrats say they are unlikely to revive the agreement until the White House agrees to back some of their domestic economic priorities, potentially including a second stimulus package.

More:
http://www.international.na">~~~~ link ~~~~

The trade deal... of course.

just like when they tried to oust Chavez... and M$M outlets from the NYT to the BBC had the pre-written "he stepped down" spin all cued up and ready to go!

BEFORE any protesters had been killed, too.

They were up to their scalps in spin, too. They were all prepared, with the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post, etc. fully primed and ready to spew their lines for them.

do you think Morales in Bolivia has any political motivation in agreeing to a recall vote?

politics. It is the politicians practicing murder most people have problems with.

Might as well just go shopping or watch American Idol or something and let the politicians worry about everything. After all, "that's just the way it is" as they say.














NOT!

and receive a better deal. Only these guys are politicians.

n/t

at bringing terrorists and Al Qaeda to justice.

n/t

Just pointing out how much that sentiment is worth, that's all.

they need to be controlled and silenced, if necessary. Colombia has honest and courageous prosecutors, who have revealed oh so many interesting rat-holes in the Uribe government (Bush's pals), often by the confessions of just such as these--the rightwing death squadders and major drug traffickers who have served the Colombian political establishment. Here, though, with the Bush Junta in charge of the 'Justice' Department, these leaks can be plugged.

Upside down, inside out world. Alice in the nightmare of Wonderland. Bushworld 'justice.'

many after being tortured, of course, believe these mega-criminals should stay in Colombia and answer for the far more serious crimes of mass murder and obscene human rights violations of helpless citizens.

Once they are safely in the U.S., being charged for drug trafficking, all the anguish and suffering of loved ones of the people, some chainsawed to death, many driven out of their homes and made homeless while these monsters STOLE their land, their houses, as well as their loved ones' lives, and their peace of mind will be relegated to the mass graves they had their bodies shoved into, or thrown into rivers.

Mass murder IS more offensive than drug trafficking, one would imagine.

Will they not be charged for mass murders here?

for narcotics trafficking, and it takes them totally out of range for murder charges, should Uribe's government ever decide to allow them to stand trial for murder(S), which they neatly sidestepped when they claimed they could get amnesty after "confessing" to their crimes and serving some jail time, if necessary.

The death squad monsters do have friends in high places.

would you want them to? would you want the US to enforce law in Venezuela??

You need to stop trying to think of ways to contradict D.U.'ers to the extent you don't
have a grasp of the conversation.

If you don't take the time to understand the conversation, then butt out until you do.

funny how the anti-interventionists are so anxious to see other countries and organizations manage another countries' affairs.

the criminals answering to justice in their own country.

n/t

n/t

n/t

Victims fear warlords will get off the hook
5:00AM Thursday May 15, 2008

BOGOTA - Victims of Colombia's far-right militias fear the surprise extradition of 14 paramilitary warlords to the United States on drug charges may keep the victims from learning their loved ones' fates and receiving reparations.

The 14 include Salvatore Mancuso, Diego Murillo and other top leaders of the illegal militias - notorious groups blamed for modern Colombia's worst atrocities.

Victims' families fear the extraditions will impede efforts to fully catalogue the warlords' crimes, unearth scores of mass graves and bring to justice the politicians and businessmen who colluded with them.

"These men are not going to confess their crimes now that they're over there," said Maria Eugenia Cobaleda, who blames Murillo for her two brothers' disappearance 10 years ago.

More:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=10510200

In this photo released by Colombia's National Police,
former paramilitary leaders, from left to right,
Salvatore Mancuso, Edwing Gomez, Ramiro Vanoy and
Diego Arroyave stand at the military airport in Bogota
before being extradited to the US, Tuesday, May 13,
2008. Colombia extradited 14 paramilitary warlords on
charges related to drug trafficking, saying they
violated the peace pact under which they demobilized.

~snip~
Many Colombians worry that a narrow U.S. focus on drug crimes will enable the warlords and their politician allies to escape responsibility for human rights violations including the deaths of at least 10,000 people.

The National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation says 130,000 victims have lodged formal complaints of "atrocious crimes" committed by the paramilitaries - including murder, rape, forced disappearances and kidnapping.

Hundreds of mass graves are thought to remain hidden across this Andean nation. According to the commission, another 2.4 million Colombians have been forced to flee their homes by the paramilitaries and their leftist rebel foes.

Much of this suffering was the direct result of orders given by the warlords now facing the prospect of lengthy drug trials in U.S. courts.

More:
http://www.bakersfield.com/893/story/443957.html

...think about it.

That's So Alvaro!
Remember all of those Colombian paramilitary leaders who were exposing the connections between Alvaro Uribe’s administration and right-wing terrorist groups? They were all extradited to the U.S. in the middle of the night, where they will be tried for drug trafficking...and nothing else.

“Claudia Lopez, an independent investigator who helped uncover the paramilitary-political scandal fears criminal cases against politicians will now end: 'They've taken away all the witnesses,' she said Tuesday.”

http://www.borev.net/2008/05/thats_so_alvaro_2.html

Colombia: Extradition of paramilitary leaders must not lead to closure of investigation into their responsibility in human rights violations
Posted: 13 May 2008

The Colombian government's decision to extradite 14 paramilitary leaders wanted in the USA on drugs-trafficking charges should not be used as an excuse to end investigations into the role played by paramilitaries in committing human rights violations against thousands of people, often in collusion with or the acquiescence of the Colombian security forces, Amnesty International said today.

On taking the decision to extradite them, the government is arguing that these paramilitary leaders have failed to tell the whole truth about the human rights violations they committed, have continued to re-offend while in prison, and have failed to fulfill commitments they had made as part of the demobilisation process in terms of reparation to their victims.

Amnesty International said:
The paramilitary demobilisation process - by which over 31,000 members of paramilitary groups supposedly demobilized -- and the legal framework that has accompanied it, has been a complete sham which has abjectly failed both to dismantle paramilitarism in Colombia and to respect the right of victims to truth, justice and reparation.

'The Colombian government now appears to share this view, which it had denied for so long,"

Amnesty International stated that in extraditing these men on drugs-trafficking charges without reference to human rights violations, there is a real danger that tentative investigations being carried out in Colombia, especially by the Human Rights Unit of the Office of the Attorney General and by the Supreme Court of Justice, will be severely weakened.

Amnesty International said:
"There is now a real danger that the full scale of human rights violations committed over the years by paramilitaries, as well as the key role played by the security forces, state officials and leading political and business figures in these crimes, will remain hidden and, as such, in complete impunity.'

Amnesty International is also concerned that allegations about the involvement of US agencies in supporting paramilitary groups may not now be fully investigated. Not only has the US provided military assistance to Colombian military units operating closely with paramilitaries, but in the 1990s evidence emerged that the PEPES paramilitary structure - created to hunt down drug-trafficker Pablo Escobar - was possibly operating with the support of US security agencies. "Don Berna" allegedly had close links with the PEPES.

The PEPES evolved into the paramilitary Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá.

Amnesty International said:
"Despite the extraditions, criminal investigations in Colombia into human rights atrocities committed by these paramilitaries, and their links with the security forces and others, must continue, if their countless victims are ever to receive any semblance of justice.

"The US authorities, for their part, also have a duty to effectively investigate, and if there is sufficient admissible evidence, prosecute the countless allegations of human rights violations already leveled against the 13 extradited paramilitaries, as well as investigate any possible links these men had with either Colombian or US officials."

Amnesty International called on the Colombian authorities to seek and confirm assurances from the US authorities that the death penalty will not be imposed.

Background Information
The Colombian government today announced that it had extradited the 13 paramilitary leaders, including Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (alias "Jorge 40") and Diego Fernando Murillo (alias "Don Berna"), to the United States, after the government argued that they had broken the terms of a demobilization agreement.

Over the last few decades paramilitaries, in coordination with the security forces and the political and economic support of many local, regional, and some national political and economic elites, have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities imaginable, including the killing and enforced disappearance of thousands of civilians and the forced displacement of millions more.

The 13 paramilitary leaders, together with hundreds of other paramilitaries, had been in detention in Colombia awaiting trial under the controversial Justice and Peace process, whereby paramilitaries who agreed to demobilize were eligible for significant reductions in prison sentences in return for full confessions about human rights violations they committed, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17758

The Guardian Covers (Up) Colombia’s Reality
May 14th, 2008By Joe Emersberger

Colombia received more detailed attention than usual from the daily Guardian of the UK during the months of March and April of this year for many reasons:

1) On March 1 Colombia’s military violated Ecuadorian sovereignty to kill Raul Reyes, a leftist (FARC) guerrilla leader, and thereby provoked a regional crisis.
2) In mid March a minor scandal erupted due to UK Foreign Minister Kim Howells’ aggressive support for UK arms exports to Colombia
3) Rumors were reported in late March that a high profile hostage of the FARC rebels, Ingrid Betancourt, was gravely ill.
4) Mark Penn resigned on April 6 from Hillary Clinton’s campaign because of his lobbying work on behalf of Colombia in support of a trade agreement with the US.

During these two months the Guardian published 38 articles that discussed Colombia in significant detail. It is a very revealing exercise to scan these articles for information that is readily available on the website of Human Rights Watch (HRW).


HRW is a prominent organization with a track record of being disproportionately hard on US enemies (Hizbullah, Hamas, Venezuela) and soft on the US allies (Israel, Haiti under Gerard Latortue). <1> It is not a group likely to exaggerate the crimes of a US and UK ally.

One might expect that a supposedly left leaning newspaper like the Guardian would, at the very least, tell readers what HRW has been reporting.

In February of 2008, in an article for the Progressive magazine, two senior HRW officials wrote:

“For years, the Bush administration in the United States has stood by the government of President Álvaro Uribe in Colombia unconditionally, turning a blind eye to Colombia’s serious human rights problems. The Blair government in the UK, for the most part, quietly followed suit, providing substantial assistance to Colombia’s military with no strings attached. Colombia presents one of the worst human rights records in the world. At nearly three million, Colombia’s population of internally displaced persons is second only to that of Sudan.”<2>

In the 38 articles examined, not a single word (out of roughly 25,000) appeared about Colombia’s internally displaced people. No doubt, unconditional support for Colombia is easier to maintain when the magnitude of its human rights disaster is completely hidden by the Liberal media, but the Guardian did not just bury the scale of the crimes. It kept the leading perpetrators mostly out of sight.

More:
http://www.ukwatch.net/article/the_guardian_covers_up_colombia%E2%80%99s_reality

Free trade in thugs
May 15th 2008 | BOGOTÁ
From The Economist print edition

Getting tougher with right-wing warlords

IN A surprise move on May 13th, President Álvaro Uribe announced the extradition to the United States of 14 of Colombia's most notorious paramilitary warlords on drug-trafficking charges. As well as sending a warning to other right-wing paramilitaries, the aim is to show Democrats in Washington that Mr Uribe means what he says about breaking with paramilitary groups who continue to murder trade unionists and other left-wingers.

Democratic congressional leaders and their trade-union allies have cited those murders as a reason for their refusal to approve a free-trade agreement with Colombia. Mr Uribe may also be hoping to boost his already soaring approval ratings to strengthen his hand in an eventual bid for an unprecedented third term as president. More than two terms in a row are currently banned by the constitution, so this would require approval by Congress.


Mr Uribe's move could backfire. Human-rights groups fear that it will rob the victims of the compensation that they are entitled to from their tormentors, and could also remove the evidence needed for a successful investigation into why Colombia's paramilitaries and their political accomplices have hitherto enjoyed impunity. More than 60 congressmen, most allies of Mr Uribe, are either already in prison or under investigation in Colombia for alleged links to paramilitaries. Last month, Mario Uribe, the president's cousin and close political ally, was arrested.

“The good news is that these paramilitary bosses could now face serious jail time,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of Human Rights Watch, a lobbying group. (In the United States, cocaine dealers can get 30 years or more.) “The bad news is they may no longer have any reason to collaborate with Colombian prosecutors investigating their atrocities...Just as local prosecutors were beginning to unravel the web of paramilitary ties to prominent politicians, the government has shipped the men with the most information out of the country,” he lamented.

More:
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11376365

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Some had started to give details on joint actions carried out by paramilitary groups and military units, another point on the agenda. Others had already announced that they would implicate local businessmen in their testimony.
(snip)

Iván Cepeda, spokesman for the Movement of Victims of Crimes of the State (MOVICE), complained to the press that the extraditions would "seriously affect" the rights of survivors, and said they were aimed at keeping the paramilitary leaders from continuing to provide the names of military, political and business accomplices and allies.

Eduardo Carreño, vice president of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, a human rights group, told IPS that "this move confirms what we have said from the start: that a Congress with a strong paramilitary presence legislated on its own behalf, and that the victims are the forgotten ones in this process."

Whisked them out at exactly the necessary moment BEFORE it really got dangerous for the establishment collaborators! Smooth work, a-holes!

It all comes with the territory for _Bush puppets.

Thanks for this tremendous article.

Colombia Sends 13 Paramilitary Leaders to U.S.
Extradition Likely to Benefit Alleged Allies in Legislature
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 14, 2008; Page A11

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 13 -- Colombia's government extradited 13 top paramilitary warlords to the United States on Tuesday, effectively handing over the most brutal commanders of the country's once-fearsome paramilitary movement.
(snip)

But the families of victims of paramilitary violence and groups that investigate paramilitarism said the extraditions will make it far more difficult, if not impossible, for Colombian prosecutors to solve countless crimes and untangle the structure of the paramilitary movement. Among those who could benefit are scores of politicians accused of helping the paramilitary members expand their reach, including the president's cousin, former senator Mario Uribe.

"It becomes harder to ask them about their ties with politicians," said León Valencia, who with several other academics wrote "Para-Politics," an acclaimed book detailing the spread of paramilitarism. "The agenda of the United States is drug trafficking, and our agenda is crimes against humanity, the political scandal and learning the truth."
(snip)

"There are so many victims, so many crimes, so much democracy that has been destroyed by these men," Becerra said by telephone from the city of Barrancabermeja. "What we the victims want to know is the truth: who financed them, who directed them, who ordered them."

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051300800.html

Colombia extradites paramilitary leaders to US: victims angry

Victims of Colombia's 44-year civil war say they now have less hope of finding out the truth about how their family members disappeared.

By Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the May 15, 2008 edition

Bogotá, Colombia - Every Wednesday for nearly a decade, dozens of men and women gather at a public plaza in Colombia's second-largest city, Medellín, to demand to know the whereabouts of their loved ones who have disappeared in Colombia's 44-year civil war.

But this Wednesday, the chance of learning the truth seemed farther away than ever. Fourteen top imprisoned warlords who had long been expected to shed light on how they committed brutal crimes were extradited to the United States Tuesday to face charges of drug trafficking, not murder.

"What was extradited was the truth," says Teresita Gaviria, leader of the group Mothers of La Candelaria that represents the families of more tan 530 victims, including three of her own relatives.

Colombia's surprise extradition of 14 right-wing paramilitary leaders was a bold move to check the expansion of the criminal networks they continued to run from prison, analysts say. But sending them to stand trial in US courts has left the victims of the paramilitary chiefs' more gruesome crimes without hope of truth and reparations.

Colombia's demobilization process

The leaders of right-wing paramilitary groups – anti-insurgent armies that terrorized the countryside for more than a decade and killed anyone suspected of sympathizing with leftist rebels – had demobilized, along with more than 30,000 fighters, as part of a negotiated deal with the government of President Álvaro Uribe.
(snip)

But Ms. Gaviria says that if the warlords had been dragging their feet on telling the whole truth about their crimes and their assets here, there is only a slim chance they will offer up the information from the US, where the courts are concerned only with drug trafficking charges. "If they toyed with us here – always promising that next week they would give details – imagine now!" she says. "There, they have no incentive to give us the information."

More:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0515/p25s13-woam.html?page=1