32 politicians arrested on paramilitary commander’s testimony, at least 23 more to go in northwester

[Judi Lynn]

32 politicians arrested on paramilitary commander’s testimony, at least 23 more to go in northwestern Colombia
Aug 28, 2014 posted by Steven Cohen

The capture of some 32 local politicians in northwestern Colombia Wednesday is only the start of a much larger purge ordered by the state on the strength of testimony provided by a demobilized paramilitary commander, local media reported.

For years, Freddy Rendon, alias “El Aleman,” led the Elmer Cardenas bloc, one of the most powerful and violent regional units in the now-defunct AUC national paramiltary umbrella. El Aleman alone is thought to have ordered and participated in dozens of murders and massacres, displacing thousands in the nortwest coastal region of Uraba, the birthplace of Colombia’s modern paramilitary phenomenon.

~snip~
On the basis of his testimony, judges have now issued some 50 new warrants for the arrests of various local politicians previously backed by the AUC during the group’s “For a Strong Uraba, Unity and Peace” inititative, which attempted to infiltrate local power structures by placing AUC allies in office.

~snip~
Indeed, El Aleman has testified that Santiago Uribe, the brother of the former president, facilitated meetings between regional paramilitary commanders and the Chiquita Brands multinational fruit company, which is facing a class action suit in the United States launched by victims of parmailitary violence.

Other multinatioanls in the region, including Coca Cola and Dole Fruits, face similar charges, and there is extensive evidence that former President Uribe himself, now a senator, played an integral role in promoting paramilitarism, especially in Antioquia, where he served as governor.

http://colombiareports.co/32-politicians-arrested-paramilitary-commanders-testimony-least-23-go-northwestern-colombia/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombia arrests 32 politicians over paramilitary ties

Colombia arrests 32 politicians over paramilitary ties
AFP
August 29, 2014, 4:22 am

Bogota (AFP) - Colombian authorities have arrested 32 local politicians for alleged ties to right-wing paramilitary groups that fueled the country's 50-year conflict before being disbanded a decade ago, prosecutors said Thursday.

Current and former mayors, ex-town councilors, civic leaders and former Senate candidates were among those arrested in the region of Uraba in the violence-torn country's northwest.

~snip~
Rendon is accused in the killings of 4,301 people during a wave of massacres and violence that swept the Uraba region in the 1990s and 2000s, when paramilitary groups waged a campaign of terror aimed at intimidating local voters.

The groups, originally formed in the late 1980s to fight Colombia's leftwing guerrilla groups, ended up forging an alliance with like-minded politicians and turning on the local population.

~snip~
The Colombian conflict, the longest in Latin America, has killed 220,000 people and caused more than five million to flee their homes since it erupted as a left-wing guerrilla uprising in the 1960s.

More:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/24843468/

[Judi Lynn]

2. For anyone interested in knowing how the right-wing paramilitaries (death squads)

got revved up in Colombia, please consider the following posted in Wikipedia:

Paramilitarism in Colombia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia are the parties responsible for most of the human rights violations in the latter half of the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict. According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces. Paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other substances together with the main Colombian drug cartels, especially in terms of trafficking and processing activities.

The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U.S. military counterinsurgency advisers who were sent to Colombia during the Cold War to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of later paramilitary groups has also involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces, politicians and multinational corporations. Paramilitary violence today is principally targeted towards peasants, unionists, indigenous people, human rights workers, teachers and left-wing political activists or their supporters. The paramilitaries claim to be acting in opposition to revolutionary Marxist-Leninist guerrilla forces and their allies among the civilian population.

~snip~
Plan Lazo[edit]

In October 1959, the United States sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation, due to the increased prevalence of armed communist self-defense communities in rural Colombia which formed during and after La Violencia.[1] Three years later, in February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey.[2]

In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yarborough encouraged the creation and deployment of a paramilitary force to commit sabotage and terrorist acts against communists:

A concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later. This should be done with a view toward development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further. This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States."[3][4][5]

The new counter-insurgency policy was instituted as Plan Lazo in 1962 and called for both military operations and civic action programs in violent areas. Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military recruited civilians into paramilitary "civil defense" groups which worked alongside the military in its counter-insurgency campaign, as well as in civilian intelligence networks to gather information on guerrilla activity. Among other policy recommendations the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature."[1][5][6] It was not until the early part of the 1980s that the Colombian government attempted to move away from the counterinsurgency strategy represented by Plan Lazo and Yarborough's 1962 recommendations.[7]

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitarism_in_Colombia