It will come as no surprise to anyone that the Colombian government has strong ties to the paramilitary. The links have been denounced for years by human rights organizations. However testimony of key death squad leaders on those ties have shaken the Colombian government, as they detail how the government collaborated in the massacres of hundreds of people.
The following are articles from 3 American newspapers on the subject.
Colombian Government Is Ensnared in a Paramilitary Scandal
By Simon Romero
The New York Times, January 21, 2007
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Jan. 20 — The government of President Álvaro Uribe, the
largest recipient of American aid outside the Middle East, has found itself
ensnared in a widening scandal as revelations surface of a secret alliance
between some of the president’s most prominent political supporters and
paramilitary death squads.
Testimony this week from Salvatore Mancuso, a former paramilitary commander
who admitted to orchestrating the killing of more than 300 people, as well
as a document made public on Friday implicating more than a dozen
politicians in the pact with paramilitaries, have injected fresh detail into
a slow-burning scandal that has caused Colombia’s elite political class to
shudder in recent weeks.
Senior members of Mr. Uribe’s government and Mr. Uribe himself have said
that anyone shown to have had illegal ties to the paramilitaries, which
terrorized Colombian cities and the countryside in the nation’s internal
war, which has gone on for decades, and made fortunes in cocaine
trafficking, should be prosecuted in courts of law.
The scandal has already touched Mr. Uribe’s cabinet, with Senator Álvaro
Araújo, the brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araújo, under
investigation for collaborating with militias.
“If there’s someone involved at the highest level, they will be fired,”
Francisco Santos, Colombia’s vice president, said in an interview. “Scrutiny
is fine for us,” Mr. Santos said. “This country needs to know the whole
truth.”
Some of the details coming to light about the breadth of paramilitary
activities are the result of a process set in motion by Mr. Uribe’s own
government, which has allowed paramilitary leaders to confess their crimes
and pay reparations in exchange for reduced sentences of no more than eight
years in prison.
Though some militia leaders have balked at the deal, much of Colombia has
been gripped by the first such confession, that of Mr. Mancuso, a cattleman
who helped found the paramilitary movement in the 1980s in an effort to
combat leftist guerrillas.
Mr. Mancuso, 48, who studied English at the University of Pittsburgh, wept
during the first days of his testimony at a special hearing in Medellín last
month. This week, however, he simply read from a statement describing how he
oversaw the assassinations of hundreds of people, with some operations made
possible with information from military intelligence.
Mr. Mancuso also put Mr. Uribe in the spotlight by saying that militias
pressured people to vote for the president in 2002, when Mr. Uribe was first
elected. Mr. Uribe responded quickly by going on a national radio network to
say he had never sent any emissaries to strike deals with the
paramilitaries.
On the heels of Mr. Mancuso’s testimony, a document rumored to exist in
recent weeks was published in the daily newspaper El Tiempo on Friday. It
describes a secret pact in 2001 between Mr. Mancuso, other paramilitary
leaders and 11 congressmen, two governors and five mayors, in which those
present agreed to work together to forge “a new social contract,” largely in
order to protect private property rights.
Senator Miguel de la Espriella, one of the signatories to the pact, helped
bring the scandal to light last year by disclosing the ties between
politicians and paramilitaries. Like other officials implicated in the pact,
he said he was forced to sign, raising doubts as what type of legal
punishment, if any, they might receive.
“At first we declined to sign, but when they put a man with a rifle next to
the document we understood we had no choice,” Mr. de la Espriella, a member
of the Democratic Colombia party, said in an e-mail interview.
Asked why he was the only politician to come forward with details of the
secret agreement, Mr. de la Espriella, alluding to widespread suspicions
that legislators and government officials had for years worked in tandem
with the paramilitaries, responded, “I told myself that a half-truth doesn’t
serve anybody, and we should all contribute to the enlightenment of the
truth during so many years of war.”
Those who signed the document included not only supporters of Mr. Uribe but
also high-ranking officials in the political opposition, pointing to how a
growing portion of the political establishment could be tarnished by the
scandal.
Some 30,000 paramilitary members have been demobilized during Mr. Uribe’s
government in recent years. Colombia’s military still receives more than
$700 million a year in aid from the United States to combat drug trafficking
and armed insurgencies.
Two guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the
National Liberation Army, still operate in the country. A truck carrying
more than 600 pounds of explosives this week destroyed a dairy plant in
southern Colombia owned by Nestlé, the Swiss food company, an act that the
police attributed to the rebels.
Although the scandal has emerged as the most pressing political challenge to
Mr. Uribe’s presidency, his approval ratings remain high, at above 60
percent, after five years of rule and a re-election victory last year. Many
Colombians credit Mr. Uribe for declining levels of murders and kidnappings
and robust economic growth.
However, political analysts here say a steady stream of disclosures related
to the paramilitary scandal could diminish Mr. Uribe’s credibility,
particularly if implicated officials are perceived to have close ties to the
president. The scandal has already entangled a former ambassador to Chile
and a former head of the intelligence service.
Equally pressing for Mr. Uribe’s government could be the scandal’s influence
on discussions in the United States Congress of aid to Colombia and a trade
agreement awaiting Congressional approval that has been signed by Mr. Uribe
and President Bush. Political analysts say the Democratic-led Congress is
expected to add greater scrutiny of human rights issues in Colombia.
**********************************
Colombian government accused of links to rightist death squads
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
The Boston Globe, printed in International Herald Tribune
Thursday, December 14, 2006
BOGOTÁ
The Colombian government, the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. aid
to fight drugs and a leftist insurgency, is under siege as evidence mounts
of links between rightist death squads and dozens of officials loyal to
President Álvaro Uribe.
In the past week, the country's Supreme Court summoned six legislators to
answer accusations that they had conspired with paramilitary leaders who are
alleged to have killed tens of thousands of leftist sympathizers and
ordinary civilians and to have run drug trafficking networks since the
1980s.
They are among two dozen sitting and former lawmakers, governors and other
public servants being investigated for or charged with colluding with
paramilitary death squads to fix elections, plan massacres, share in
corruption proceeds or help the militias get a better deal in peace talks.
The so-called parapolitical crisis threatens to close in on Uribe, the best
friend President George W. Bush has in a region increasingly dominated by
leftist politicians. It also risks setting back Colombian efforts to make
peace with armed insurgents on the left and right who have terrorized
civilians and trafficked drugs for decades.
Despite the demobilization over the past three years of 31,000 members and
allies of rightist death squads, there are widespread reports that their
political influence and hold over organized crime and drug trafficking
remain intact.
A congressional committee is studying accusations that Uribe himself
supported the rise of rightist militias when he was a governor in the 1990s.
Uribe has vehemently denied the allegations, challenging anyone with
evidence to come forward.
Still, the accusations against Uribe and his allies have reopened old wounds
in Colombian society.
Civilian militias formed in the 1980s to combat leftist guerrillas, and they
later morphed into death squads that engaged in drug trafficking and
extortion. It has long been alleged that powerful elites — from cattle
ranchers and politicians to military commanders — helped establish and fund
the militias. Several years ago, paramilitary leaders boldly declared that
they controlled one-third of the Colombian Congress.
But after years of impunity, the paramilitaries have come under the
microscope after disarming and agreeing to confess their crimes in exchange
for lenient sentences.
The attorney general's office announced in October that a confiscated
computer belonging to a paramilitary leader known as Jorge 40 contained
evidence that politicians had accepted funds from paramilitaries, used their
links to militias to intimidate constituents into supporting them and even
plotted massacres. Since then, fresh revelations, arrest warrants and
resignations have followed.
"They are just turning over the first rock to see what worms are under it,
and there are many more rocks to go," said Adam Isacson, director of the
Colombia program at the Center for International Policy, a think tank in
Washington.
"We still haven't gotten to the generals and colonels, the industrialists
and landowners or senior members of Congress," he said. "Nobody has any idea
how high this will go."
Two weeks ago, a pro-Uribe senator, Miguel de la Espriella, revealed that he
and 39 other congressmen had signed a secret accord pledging loyalty to the
militias at a meeting in 2001.
With the government's credibility at stake, Uribe is scrambling to salvage
his reputation by taking a hard line against the paramilitaries and those
who aided them.
On Dec. 1, his government moved 59 top paramilitary chiefs who had been
confined at a converted resort to a maximum-security prison, citing rumors
that they were plotting to flee and were involved in the murders of two
paramilitary commanders who were not in custody. The militia chiefs angrily
denied the rumors, and embarrassing allegations surfaced last week that
corrupt police and prosecutors might have been involved in the murders.
If charges against the security forces are proved in court, Isacson said,
"It'll be really hard for Washington to justify continuing $600 million a
year in military and police aid to Colombia."
Uribe's three-year peace process with paramilitaries, criticized by victims'
groups for being too lenient, was the centerpiece of his first term.
Coupled with his crackdown on leftist guerrillas and improvements in
security, it won him a landslide re-election last May and continued U.S.
support. But the confidence between the government and the paramilitaries
that allowed for a peace accord appears to have crumbled. Last week, the
paramilitary chiefs declared an end to talks with Uribe's envoys.
Security analysts worry that the rupture of trust in the peace process could
be taken as a signal by the few thousand paramilitaries who have not
demobilized to unleash a new cycle of violence.
Those groups that have not demobilized yet probably will not do so now, said
Alfredo Rangel Suárez, director of the Security and Democracy Foundation in
Bogotá. "This crisis could set off vendettas and violence among
paramilitaries and will implicate more sectors," he said.
****************
Colombian Government Shaken By Lawmakers' Paramilitary Ties
Investigation Leads to Arrest of Current, Former Officials
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 18, 2006; A17
BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 17 -- The government of President Álvaro Uribe is
being shaken by its most serious political crisis yet, as details emerge
about members of Congress who collaborated with right-wing death squads to
spread terror and exert political control across Colombia's Caribbean coast.
Two senators, Álvaro García and Jairo Merlano, are in custody, as is a
congressman, Eric Morris, and a former congresswoman, Muriel Benito. Four
local officials have been arrested, and a warrant has been issued for a
former governor, Salvador Arana. All are from the state of Sucre, where the
attorney general's office has been exhuming bodies from mass graves --
victims of a paramilitary campaign to erode civilian support for Marxist
rebels in Colombia's long conflict.
The investigation, which has revealed how lawmakers and paramilitary
commanders rigged elections and planned assassinations, has shaken
Colombia's Congress to its core. One powerful senator from Cesar state,
Álvaro Araujo, has warned that if he is targeted in the investigation, it
would taint relatives of his in the government and, ultimately, the
president, whom he has strongly supported.
The arrests and disclosures about the investigation, which is focusing on at
least five more members of Congress, come weeks after prosecutors leaked a
report revealing how paramilitary fighters have killed hundreds of people,
trafficked cocaine to the United States and sacked government institutions
while negotiating a disarmament with Uribe's government.
Mario Iguarán, the attorney general, said the crisis is worse than the
scandal that tarnished former president Ernesto Samper, who in the 1990s was
accused of having used drug money to fund his political campaign. The United
States withdrew his visa in response.
Uribe's government says it has been tough on the paramilitary forces, noting
that 30,000 fighters have demobilized in three years, a disarmament larger
than that of any leftist rebel group in Latin American history.
But the latest scandal has raised questions about how effective the
disarmament has been and whether the government is truly committed to
dismantling an organization that has infiltrated town halls, hospitals and
even the government's intelligence agency, the DAS. Just this week, the
inspector general's office leveled disciplinary charges against the former
head of the DAS, Jorge Noguera, for having given classified information
about the agency's operations to paramilitary forces.
"In plain public view and with evidence, the tip of the iceberg has
appeared, but it is just the tip of the iceberg," said Gustavo Petro, a
senator who has revealed details of paramilitary infiltration of government
institutions in hearings. "We see it today in Sucre, but it extends beyond."
Recalling past statements from top paramilitary commanders, who boasted of
having formed alliances with as much as a third of Congress, Petro said, "I
think the paramilitaries were right."
Reacting to the crisis on Friday, Uribe said, "It's healthy for the country
to know the political ties that exist with paramilitarism."
"I call on all the congressmen to, of their own initiative, show up before
judges and tell the truth," he said in a speech marking the anniversary of
the Supreme Court.
Uribe's image as a crusader against Colombia's illegal armed groups,
however, has been tarnished.
The congressmen who have been implicated were members of a bloc that was
loyal to the president and that approved a law permitting him to run for a
second four-year term in May. They also supported a law governing the
disarmament of paramilitary fighters that has been roundly criticized by the
United Nations and some on Capitol Hill for providing too many loopholes for
commanders to evade justice.
"There's no doubt that the political base in the provinces is tainted," said
Gustavo Duncan, a security analyst who has written a book on the
paramilitary forces, "The Gentlemen of War." "Those are the great losers.
And those regional leaders are where Uribe has gotten much of his power."
The tainted politicians came to the attention of authorities through an
informer, a onetime paramilitary fighter named Jairo Castillo Peralta, and
because their names turned up in a computer confiscated from one of the
country's most powerful paramilitary commanders, Rodrigo Tovar. The computer
files detail meetings between paramilitary forces and lawmakers such as Sen.
Dieb Maloof, who lives in the city of Barranquilla but has campaigned in
Sucre.
Reached by phone, Maloof denied involvement with the paramilitary groups but
said he is ready to answer questions put forward by the Supreme Court, which
is investigating the Congress. "I asked to be able to give my own version,
and to find out if there is anything against me," he said.
The best-known of the lawmakers implicated in the scandal is Álvaro García,
a rotund local boss known by friends and enemies alike as "the Fat Man." In
a secret recording from Oct. 6, 2000, that is being used against him, Garcia
and a well-known cattleman, Joaquín García, are heard coordinating the
paramilitary assault on the town of Macayepo. A few days later, paramilitary
fighters killed 16 peasant farmers there with rocks and machetes.
Petro, the senator, said the Uribe administration must aggressively purge
those lawmakers with ties to paramilitary forces. "No matter how many
congressmen go to jail, there are mafias still out there, and they will
continue to find others to control," he said. "This is not just a judicial
responsibility, this is a political responsibility."