September 6-16: Delegation to Colombia

Travel with other SOA Watch activists to Colombia to meet with grassroots organizers

who are fighting for justice in the face of military repression. Witness the devastating impact of SOA training and U.S. military aid.

The delegation is organized by SOA Watch, the 8th Day Center for Justice and Witness for Peace.

Cost $1,275 + airfare.

For more information contact Katie Varatta at (312) 641-5151

Colombia has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to train at the SOA, more than any other Latin American country. The results are chilling. SOA Watch has documented cases in which SOA graduates and instructors have been involved in massacres, the killing of striking workers, assassinations and torture. The 1993 human rights report State Terrorism in Colombia cites 247 Colombian officers for human rights violations. Fully one half of those cited were SOA graduates. Some were even featured as SOA guest speakers or instructors or included in the "Hall of Fame" after their involvement in such crimes. For example, General Farouk Yanini Diaz was a guest speaker at the school in 1990 and 1991 after his involvement in the 1988 Uraba massacre of 20 banana workers, the assassination of the mayor of Sabana de Torres, and the massacre of 19 businessmen. According to a U.S. State Department Report, he was also accused of "establishing and expanding paramilitary death squads, as well as ordering dozens of disappearances, and the killing of judges and court personnel sent to investigate previous crimes."

A U.S. State Department Report states that Colombia’s 20th military brigade was disbanded for its involvement in human rights abuses, including the targeted killing of civilians. The commander of that brigade was SOA graduate Paucelino Latorre Gamboa. The report also links SOA graduates to an illegal raid on the offices of a nongovernmental human rights group, to the massacre of more than 30 civilians in Mapiripan,

as well as many other atrocities.

On February 21-22, 2005, eight members of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in Urabá, Colombia—including three young children—were brutally massacred. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military, and peace community members saw the army’s 17th and 11th Brigades in the area around the time of the murders. General Héctor Jaime Fandiño Rincón is the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army. Fandiño Rincón is a graduate of the School of the Americas.