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New Evidence in February 2005 Massacre Investigation |
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Tags: Colombia
A former member of the paramilitaries confessed to assisting the Army’s 17th Brigade in murdering Alejandro Perez, one of the eight people killed in the February 2005 massacre in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. On April 25, Adriano José Cano, alias Melaza, formerly with the Banana Paramilitary Bloc, told investigators that the Army gave him a weapon and a uniform to participate in operations, and that in one of them he helped in the killing of Alejandro Perez.
Cano gave testimony as part of the demobilization process that requires paramilitary members to confess crimes they committed in order to receive a sentence reduction. The prosecutor and Inspector General investigators working on the massacre’s criminal and disciplinary investigations were expected to follow up with more questions.
Cano’s testimony not only gives further evidence of Army’s responsibility in the massacre, a charge that the Peace Community has made since immediately after it happened. It also underscores the Army’s illegal practice of using non-army personnel (including active and demobilized illegal combatants) in carrying out military operations. While Colombian law allows using these people as informants, acts such as carrying weapons, wearing a uniform and engaging in combat itself are banned.
Source: El Tiempo, 26 April 2007.
Read More About the San Jose de Apartado Massacre
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Colombian Senator Alleges Assassination Plot |
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Tags: Colombia
BOGOTA -- (AP) -- A leading opposition senator went public Tuesday with an alleged assassination plot, accusing a former army colonel who has provided security for the U.S. coal company Drummond of conspiring to kill him.
Sen. Gustavo Petro told The Associated Press that the public prosecutor's office learned of the plot from one of the would-be assassins, who testified he met with retired army Col. Julian Villate and others in January in the coastal city of Santa Marta to plan the killing.
The assassination was not carried out, and Petro said he had no more details about the plot. A spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office would not confirm it had the testimony, but said it was looking into Petro's allegations.
Petro has taken the lead among Colombian lawmakers in unmasking ties between President Alvaro Uribe's allies and illegal right-wing militias.
He and his relatives have received a series of death threats since November, when his denunciations of paramilitary infiltration in Colombian politics spurred probes that have landed eight Uribe-allied members of Congress in jail on charges ranging from conspiracy to murder.
Uribe has condemned any links between politicians and the murderous militias, and has vowed to support the federal investigations wherever they lead.
Colombia's chief prosecutor opened a criminal probe last month into Drummond's alleged paramilitary ties, and a federal judge in Alabama is hearing a civil suit accusing Drummond of paying paramilitary hit men to kill three union leaders in 2001 at one of the company's Colombia mines.
Drummond Co., based in Birmingham, Ala., issued a statement Tuesday night rejecting ``all accusations that tie the company to criminal acts or to illegal groups''.
In the same statement, the company said the retired colonel ``came with the best recommendations. . . . The fact that he had worked for the United States Embassy in Colombia would lead one to suppose that there had been a thorough check of his résumé.''
A former leftist rebel who is protected by nine bodyguards, Petro has a history of thwarting assassination attempts by learning about them in advance and going public.
Petro brought the so-called para-politico scandal closer to Uribe last week, alleging before Colombia's congress that the president's rancher brother Santiago was a militia member in the 1990s, and that paramilitary gunmen met on Uribe family ranches to plan killings.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore then snubbed Uribe by withdrawing from an environmental forum in Miami rather than appear with him in public.
Drummond's Colombia press office did not immediately confirm or deny that Villate was employed in its security team, and officials at Drummond's headquarters in Alabama did not immediately return messages seeking comment about Petro's latest allegations.
The AP also attempted to reach Villate at a Drummond office, where a company operator said he was listed as an employee but the phone went unanswered.
Drummond confirmed, in court papers obtained by the AP, that Villate coordinated security at the company's port in Cienaga on the Caribbean coast as recently as 2005. And the president of the Sintraminercol national mining union, Francisco Ramirez, said Villate ``continues to be a member of Drummond's security.''
Ramirez said Drummond hired Villate to break up the union at its Colombia operations, and that Villate also was involved in a 2004 plot to break up the public employees' union in the western city of Cali, where Uribe's government has sought to privatize the municipal utility.
Meanwhile, a separate plot to assassinate former domestic intelligence agency official Rafael Garcia, a key witness in both Drummond cases, was foiled this week by prison authorities, that man's lawyer said.
Garcia says he was present when Augusto Jimenez, the president of Drummond's Colombia operations, delivered a suitcase with US$200,000 cash to a representative of regional paramilitary warlord Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, as payment for the murder of the top two union leaders at Drummond's La Loma mine.
Garcia's lawyer, Jose Strusberg, told the AP that authorities had transferred six prisoners who were plotting to kill his client from nearby cells. ''Garcia is a target of dark forces that want to eliminate him,'' said Strusberg.
Prison officials, however, said the transfer was routine.
Garcia also is a key witness in the case against his former boss, Jorge Noguera, who was chief of the domestic intelligence agency. Noguera was hand-picked for the job by Uribe after running his campaign in the state of Magdalena, where Drummond's Cienaga port is located.
Colombia is the world's most dangerous country for union organizing -- more than 800 trade unionists have been murdered in the country over the last six years, and almost all remain unsolved.
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AP writers Sergio DeLeon and Darcy Crowe contributed to this report.
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U.N.: Colombia's Army Killed Civilians |
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Tags: Colombia
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombian security forces killed civilians in several states last year and falsely labeled many as leftist rebels slain in combat, the United Nations said a report released Thursday.
Colombia's government also has at times ignored links between security forces and illegal armed groups, the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights said in its annual report on Colombia.
The report said leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups and, to a lesser extent, government forces were all behind frequent human rights abuses, including torture, executions and disappearances. The three sides have been pitted against each other in a half-century-old civil conflict.
The U.N. found that Colombia's army - the largest recipient of $700 million in annual anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency aid from the United States - had participated in killing civilians in 21 of Colombia's 32 states.
The U.N. said the numbers of civilian killed in those areas showed an increase over 2005 but did not provide death toll figures.
In many cases, the victims were falsely presented as leftist rebels killed in combat, crime scene evidence was tampered with and the investigation was led by the military's questioned criminal justice system.
The report said such killings with ``characteristics of extrajudicial executions do not appear to be isolated incidents'' and may have been prompted partly by the government's use of combat deaths as a benchmark to measure success against leftist insurgents.
Despite its criticism, the tone of the report was softer than in previous years. It was the first under Juan Pablo Corlazzoli, a Uruguayan sociologist who took over as director of the U.N. high commissioner's office in Colombia last year amid a dispute about the agency's future.
``We believe progress has been made,'' Corlazzoli said, praising Colombian officials for showing ``greater commitment'' to reducing abuses.
President Alvaro Uribe's office said the government was working with the agency to prevent future rights abuses by the military, and that the ``principal human rights indicators, with a few exceptions - reflected in the report - show a favorable trend.''
Corlazzoli said his office received 2,138 complaints of human rights abuses last year, roughly the same number as 2005.
While 31,000 right-wing fighters have been demobilized under a 2003 peace deal with the government, the report said new armed groups were taking their place in some regions, imposing economic and military control.
The report said security forces had taken no action against police or soldiers believed to have links to such groups.
But Corlazzoli praised the Supreme Court's investigation of several members of Congress for alleged ties to the paramilitary groups. Eight pro-government lawmakers have been arrested in the case. |
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Chiquita admits to paying Colombia terrorists |
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Tags: Colombia
Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid terrorists for protection in a volatile farming region of Colombia.
The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company?s financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.
In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.
The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia?s civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country?s cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.
Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. In addition to paying the AUC, prosecutors said, Chiquita made payments to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company?s banana-growing area shifted.
Leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries have fought viciously over Colombia?s banana-growing region, though the victims are most often noncombatants. Most companies in the area have extensive security operations to protect employees.
In Colombia, authorities reported Wednesday that nine geologists searching for gold were captured by the FARC. In addition, the army confirmed that four contractors hired by Colombian oil giant Ecopetrol were missing near Colombia?s border with Venezuela.
Colombia has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Arrangements between companies and either guerrillas or paramilitaries are not uncommon, but it is impossible to know how much money is paid each year.
?The information filed today is part of a plea agreement, which we view as a reasoned solution to the dilemma the company faced several years ago,? Chiquita?s chief executive, Fernando Aguirre, said in a statement. ?The payments made by the company were always motivated by our good faith concern for the safety of our employees.?
Chiquita sold its Colombian banana operations in June 2004.
Details of the settlement were not included in court documents, but Aguirre said Chiquita would pay $25 million in fines, which it set aside this year. The company reported the deal to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A plea hearing was scheduled for Monday.
The payments were approved by senior executives at Chiquita, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Prosecutors said Chiquita began paying the right-wing AUC after a meeting in 1997 and disguised the payments in company books.
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Salvatore Mancuso, the former Commander of the right wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, testified Tuesday that the paramilitaries, branded "foreign terrorist organizations" by the U.S. State Department in 2001, were aided by high ranking Colombian military officers in training and logistics. 
