Death Squads in Colombia

The following article from the AP reports on, but twists the truth about the paramilitary death squads run by the U.S. and Colombian Military. The U.S. military commands the Colombian Military and is in charge of the counter-insurgency war against the FARC-EP and other rebel groups. The paramilitaries are directed against the poor peasants and other sectors of society that support the insurgent rebels. The paramilitary death squads are being white washed and then legalized in many cases by turning their members into private security contractors. Some of the jailed paramilitaries are threatening to talk about their links to politicians and rich people. The pressure is on President Uribe and the Colombian government to try to stop the truth from being spoken by the paramilitary killers both those in jail and those still operating. We will watch developments closely.

Tom Burke
Colombia Action Network

Colombian warlord testifies on links with military

January 16, 2007 - Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia: A leading paramilitary warlord has started to name military men who helped him carry out savage massacres in Colombia's civil war — but so far the soldiers implicated are dead or imprisoned.

Dressed in an expensive suit and often checking his laptop, Salvatore Mancuso spent Monday and Tuesday recounting his paramilitary days for a commission of prosecutors in the northern city of Medellin.

Such confessions are the cornerstone of a peace process between the government and the illegal group founded by landowners and drug traffickers to fight leftist rebels and take over large tracts of territory.

Colombia's establishment is roiling from a succession of revelations linking politicians to the paramilitaries. But the paramilitaries themselves so far have been tightlipped.

The paramilitary groups rose to become a huge organization that exported cocaine and killed rivals, operating in almost all of Colombia's 32 provinces while threatening or cultivating allies among politicians, the church, business leaders, wealthy farmers and the security forces.

In his testimony, Mancuso said the army's Col. Lino Sanchez helped in a massacre in the town of Mapiripan, where close to 50 people were slaughtered. Sanchez is already serving a 40-year sentence for his role in the bloodshed.

The warlord also fingered the now-deceased Gen. Alfonso Manosalva, who has a battalion named after him, as a source of information that lead to the massacre of 15 peasants in the village of El Aro in 1996.

Gen. Freddy Padilla, chairman of Colombia's Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the reputation of the general, telling reporters, "In his time, he was distinguished and while the investigation continues we will continue to honor his name as we have done until now."

But he said that "if anyone decided to go alone and break the law and the rules will have to face justice alone, a justice that will have full institutional backing,"

Mancuso also testified that his group of fighters paid the police and the army in one zone about US$400,000 (€310,000) a month for their co-operation, said Gustavo Gallon, director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists.

Gallon, along with victims of paramilitary violence, has been watching Mancuso's testimony over the closed-circuit television system.

As part of the peace process between the government and the far-right paramilitaries, listed by the U.S. government as a "foreign terrorist organization", demobilized commanders must confess all their crimes during their time in Colombia's four-decade conflict in order to benefit for light sentences.

Under the terms of the accord, commanders convicted will receive a maximum of eight years in prison.

Those who are found to have omitted revealing crimes would face trials in regular courts where they could be sentenced to as much as 40 years for each crime.