Court case may yet prove that - in Colombia - crime can pay

[Judi Lynn]

Source: The Scotsman

Tue 17 Jul 2007

Court case may yet prove that - in Colombia - crime can pay
JEREMY MCDERMOTT
IN MEDELLIN

A LEGEND of the Colombian underworld appeared in court yesterday, hoping to escape extradition to the US by taking advantage of amnesty legislation.

Diego Murillo, better known by his underworld alias "Don Berna" surrendered in 2005 as part of a peace process with right wing paramilitaries of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC). So far more than 30,000 fighters have given up their weapons.

As part of the deal demobilised paramilitaries who confess to their crimes face a maximum of seven years in the work farm and are shielded from extradition.
(snip)

After 25 years in the criminal underworld, Don Berna knows far too much and could implicate senior politicians and members of the security forces. However he has so far denied even being a drugs trafficker, although DEA sources admit that he is one paramilitary leader they are desperate to get their hands on.



Read more: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1110912007

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"Don Berna" (Diego Murillo)

&w=470">~~~~ click! ~~~~

Google translation of this Spanish caption to English:

En julio de 2004, una Corte federal de Manhattan hizo un particular señalamiento a los jefes paramilitares Vicente Castaño y Diego Murillo. Los dos cabecillas de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia –conocidos con los alias de “Profe” y “Don Berna” respectivamente– fueron acusados de “supervisar el transporte marítimo de cocaína, a bordo de lanchas rápidas o de barcos de carga, desde Colombia hasta los Estados Unidos”.

In 2004 July, a federal Court of Manhattan it made a particular signalling to the paramilitary heads Vicente Castaño and Diego Murillo. Both ringleaders of the United Self-defense of Colombia - known with the alias “Profe” and “Don Berna” respectively they were accused “to supervise the marine cocaine transport, on board of speedboats or cargo ships, from Colombia to the United States”.



Indigenous Colombian child.

[formercia]

1. Someone needs to be charged with Genocide

Nothing has changed in the last 500 years. Instead of lances and swords, it's automatic weapons and chain saws.

[Bacchus39]

2. drug trafficking for profit

who would have thought?




A native Colombian woman

[Judi Lynn]

3. Colombia: Using the US Military to Boost Investor Confidence

Colombia: Using the US Military to Boost Investor Confidence

• Bush overhauled US policy on Colombia to allow military aid (previously allocated exclusively for anti-narcotics operations) to be used by Colombia's military directly against guerilla groups.
  
  
• Bush dispatched US Special Forces operatives and slated $98 million to train and equip Colombian soldiers to guard pipelines and facilitate oil exploration largely for US-based companies. 10
  
  
• Bush praised Colombia's military, which is accused of human rights abuses and cooperation with paramilitary death squads. In fact, paramilitary activity has increased dramatically in areas patrolled by US and Colombian troops: rates of civilian deaths and forced displacement have nearly doubled under Bush's policy and record numbers of people have been disappeared.11
  
  
• Threatening to withdraw military aid, Bush bullied Colombia and over 90 other countries into signing an agreement to guarantee US citizens immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.* Bush thus severely undermined efforts to hold Colombia's government (and many others) accountable to international law protecting the rights of civilians in war zones.
  (snip/...)

http://www.madre.org/articles/int/confrontingthebushagenda.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Meager confessions stall Colombian paramilitary peace process

Meager confessions stall Colombian paramilitary peace process
The Associated Press
Published: July 21, 2007

MEDELLIN, Colombia:

~snip~
Diego Murillo has long been a godfather of Colombia's cocaine underworld. In the late 1990s, he joined the illegal right-wing militias that killed thousands in a decade-long reign of terror originally aimed at eliminating leftist rebels that ended up corrupting politics.
(snip)

They are among some 60 paramilitary warlords who surrendered under a 2003 peace pact that promises each prison terms of no more than eight years if they confess to all their crimes. But Murillo sorely disappointed victims and prosecutors last week during his first two days of testimony, admitting to little and conveniently blaming crimes attributed to him on dead people.
(snip)

Their recalcitrance — along with the persistence of right-wing criminal gangs in much of Colombia — has raised questions about the viability of the paramilitary peace deal with Uribe's government under which more than 31,000 fighters demobilized.
(snip)

In his testimony this month, Tovar called himself a "freedom fighter" and said he and his comrades were "political prisoners." He got a recess until Aug. 21, ostensibly so he can gather data on his victims.
(snip)

An ever-widening "para-politico" scandal continues to plague Uribe's government. Last week, the Supreme Court issued a 15th arrest warrant for a member of Congress. Fourteen are now in jail on charges ranging from simply colluding with the militias to co-plotting murders.
(snip)

He objected on moral grounds, however, that three demobilized paramilitaries were running for local and regional offices in the provinces, something the law allows

More:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/21/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Warlords-Confess.php?page=1

[Judi Lynn]

5. From "El Tiempo," a Colombian newspaper, on "Don Berna:"

El Tiempo reports this morning:

“Don Berna’s” multiple dead, displaced and disappeared may not tangle him up as much as his risky past in mafia.

During the 1980s he belonged to the Moncada and Galeano clan, which did business with the Medellín cartel. Later, he joined forces with the narcos of Valle del Cauca in the “Pepes” to combat Pablo Escobar.

The United States has asked for his extradition on narcotrafficking charges.

These unholy relationships continued until 1997, when he began to become part of the AUC and rose to the rank of inspector general.

He was the first of the big chiefs to go to the Itagüí maximum-security prison. “Don Berna” has remained silent and enigmatic.

Many still attribute to him an immense amount of power in the Antioquian capital , and although the mayor’s office dislikes these claims, academic researchers insist that the city’s current calm owes in part to the former “para” leader having ordered his gangs to cease their violence.

In two critical moments for “Don Berna,” Medellín was mysteriously paralyzed.

Intelligence agencies affirm that, from his cell, he continues to manage the “Envigado Office” network of hitmen-for-hire, whose leader on the outside is alias “Rogelio.”

Medellín’s ombudsman has registered 2,100 intra-urban displacements since Cacique Nutibara bloc demobilized , and 64 percent of them said that those who made them leave were “paras” or demobilized paramilitaries.

If these allegations are correct, and Don Berna is still controlling criminal and narco activity in Medellín, he should not be entitled to a light jail sentence under the “Justice and Peace” law - and indeed should be subject to extradition to the United States. That decision will be up to the prosecutors who will begin considering his case today.

Like other paramilitary leaders, Don Berna appears to be preparing to accompany his confession with a less-than-spontaneous show of support on the streets outside. Semana magazine reported yesterday on the pressure that “former” paramilitaries exerted on a charter high school in the slums of western Medellín.

Last Wednesday afternoon, a group of demobilized members of the Cacique Nutibara bloc arrived at the CEDEPRO educational institution in Medellín’s Alta Vista neighborhood. They confronted the directors with the peremptory order to fill two buses with students on Monday, and to send them to the prosecutor’s office building to support Don Berna’s hearing. The directors refused to do that, and the men immediately insulted them. They told them that by saying no, they were proving what “the boss” had said about them. That those from CEDEPRO were the only ones who wouldn’t collaborate, while the rest of the sector’s institutions, they said, had already obeyed.

This act demonstrates, once again, what has been happening with the paramilitary leaders’ confessions: they are becoming a circus spectacle in which the victims are hit the hardest.
(snip/...)

http://www.cipcol.org/?p=442
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Almost sounds like the smug, fixed justice system _Bush brought with him, doesn't it?

[Judi Lynn]

6. It needs to be noted by Americans that Bush's friend, Pres. Uribe is protecting this major drug lord

from extradition to the United States, despite his HIDEOUS history and power, and it seems to be okie dokie with our pResident, as well, as there hasn't been a peep about getting after him, this bloodthirsty, greedy, amoral monster, the successor of Pablo Escobar.

Here was the end of Colombia's huge, rude, dirty, vicious druglord, Pablo Escobar, who DIDN'T receive the total protection of the Colombian President.





The Death of Pablo Escobar
Colombian painter, Fernando Botero

[Judi Lynn]

7. Kick!

:kick: :kick: :kick: