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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 09:08 PM
Original message
US Seeks Extradition Of Rebels Captured In Hostage Rescue
Source: Agence France-Presse

AFP News Briefs List
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
US seeks extradition of rebels captured in hostage rescue

The United States plans to ask Colombia for the extradition of the two rebels captured during last week's rescue of 15 hostages, and President Alvaro Uribe said he would agree, a top official said Tuesday.

General Freddy Padilla, the head of the military, said the extradition request will officially be presented on Wednesday, but that Uribe had already been made aware of it by US Ambassador to Bogota William Brownfield.

Uribe told the envoy he would support the request, Padilla added.

"The president authorized me to disclose this situation, and said that once all legal requirements are met he would be willing to extradite (the two rebels)," Padilla told reporters.

On July 2, Colombian commandos posing as rebels tricked FARC guerrillas into handing over 15 hostages including three Americans, French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and 11 Colombian soldiers.





Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20080709-us-seeks-extradition-rebels-captured-hostage-rescue
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redirish28 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 09:20 PM
Response to Original message
1. Call me nuts but I'm getting a BAD feeling about this...
When these two men are turned over to the U.S. watch them be classify as enemy combatants. Also watch Bushco somehow manage to use these two as a way of making legal the U.S.'s program of kidnapping individuals from foreign countries they find to be a threat to the country.
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bluesmail Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 09:44 PM
Response to Original message
2. This way we know where they're going. If they become
disappeared there's going to be important people asking questions. They are witnesses.
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Drum Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 09:48 PM
Response to Original message
3. Yeh, the US government is anxious to prosecute everybody
EXCEPT their own corrupt elements, who damage us all so much more than the other suspects.

Wounding one's own country from within used to be called treason, didn't it?

Without policing our own, America has no leg to stand on in claiming some right to be the World's police.

:(
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 09:54 PM
Response to Original message
4. We better hope Gitmo is never overrun.
The hypocrisy is mind boggling.
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izquierdista Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 03:13 PM
Response to Reply #4
13. Bastille Day is next week
I look forward to the day when Gitmo is overrun. Maybe I will set off some fireworks on Monday in anticipation of the event. :woohoo:
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-08-08 10:54 PM
Response to Original message
5. Why shouldn't these men be tried in their own country, anyway?
I don't get it.

Why are they coming here?

Their war is with the Colombian government, not the U.S.

Have to step away again for a while, but will return. I'm seriously concerned about why this is a legal operation. Does this seem odd to anyone else?
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Oregone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 12:44 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. Very Odd
They have no business being extradited here under any grounds whatsoever.

Bottom line: we want carcass trophies.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 04:30 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. Thanks for the comment. Our reality is really being tested, isn't it? n/t
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ngant17 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 04:54 AM
Response to Reply #5
8. The pattern is becoming obvious
The recent Democracy Now interview with the Colombian Manuel Rozental, he mentions how the US suddenly requested extradition for 14 Colombians:

"Mancuso ... said clearly, “They funded us. They armed us. They trained us,” which is very important." (He refers to the three US banana companies—Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte)

"In fact, just a few days after this came out to the US public, Mancuso and another fourteen paramilitaries were taken, extradited into the US, so that they would be charged for drug trade and all the crimes against humanity and all the names he said he was going to name—Mancuso said he was going to denounce the direct links between the multinational US corporations, the US government, the Colombian government and the paramilitaries to the State Department and Department of Justice. And just after he says that, he is thrown into jail into darkness in the US, so that all these criminal activities and the architecture of power in Colombia could not be exposed. All this stuff is covered up."


And then, the links between corporate interest, paramilitary death squads, the Uribe and the Bush administration have been hidden, covered up completely.

It's fairly easy to manufacture evidence and give it to the MSM, look at what that did with the laptop, the so-called FARC "uranium", ect. All they do is hid and supress their so-called 'evidence', in the interests of national security, and they can railroad these people into jail without any legal recourse.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 05:26 AM
Response to Reply #8
9. Started hearing about people in Colombia protesting the paras being extradited before they were
brought up here. The citizens were saying that once they were here, and tried and imprisoned for drugs their massacres, all the information about who was slaughtered, how, and why would be lost, or squelched, of course, and all the information about the ties to government officials would be covered up as well.

You definitely know the material. This is really sad.

Salvatore Mancuso was on CBS's "60 Minutes" and the interviewer asked him if anyone from the Justice Department ever came down to Colombia after he was in jail there and asked him for information on the American companies who had given the death squads money, and the details about that, and he said NO ONE had ever contacted him for information they needed to start legal proceeding against these American based multinationals which had broken international law.

The CBS "60 Minutes" program is here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/08/60minutes/main4080920.shtml




Salvatore Mancuso


~~~~~~~~

Colombian Warlord Confirms Collusion with SOA/WHINSEC Graduates

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.

Mancuso, testifying in a closed hearing in the city of Medellin, said the Colombian state supported the paramilitaries since their creation in the 1980’s and that “paramilitaries are a state policy”.

Amongst the military and government officials signaled by Mancuso as collaborators are General Rito Alejo del Río, General Martín Carreño Sandoval, General Harold Bedoya Pizarro, General Fernando Landazabal, Colonel Alfonso Manosalva Flores, and the current Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos. The six men received training or served as instructors at the U.S. Army School of the Americas and have been accused by Mancuso of inciting and promoting paramilitary intervention in certain regions of Colombia.

The strategy of using civilian paramilitary groups and death squads to avoid government oversight and accountability has been a common tactic of SOA/WHINSEC graduates throughout Latin America. Salvadoran SOA/WHINSEC graduate and ARENA party founder Roberto D'Aubussoin established the Death Squads that were responsible for much of the violence in El Salvador in the 1980's. General Manuel B. Lucas Garcia, who attended the school in 1965 and 1970, masterminded the creation of the Civil Defense Patrols in Guatemala. Mexico's Jose Ruben Rivas Pena, who took the SOA/WHINSEC’s elite Command and Staff Course, called for the "training and support for self-defense forces or other paramilitary organizations in Chiapas” as a response to the Zapatista uprising in 1994.

http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=1542
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hack89 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 05:55 AM
Response to Reply #5
10. Get them out the reach of FARC perhaps?
Edited on Wed Jul-09-08 05:55 AM by hack89
to ensure that they don't trigger a rash of kidnappings in Columbia? I don't really know but I suspect there are some rational reasons. As for legality, while their war is with Colombia they did kidnap Americans and I am sure that they can be linked to cocaine trafficking - both of which I am sure are expeditable crimes. If you look at them as common criminals instead of soldiers, it makes more sense.
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AlphaCentauri Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 11:15 AM
Response to Original message
11. The culture of racism trying to show that latin americans can't serve justice
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blindpig Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 11:40 AM
Response to Original message
12. Oh yeah, don't fuck with our mercenaries.

I think that's the message here.

Might make FARC rethink taking prisoners of that type. Couldn't blame them.

The blatant propaganda about this on National Propaganda Radio is nauseating.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jul-09-08 03:25 PM
Response to Original message
14. Well, just as with the Mancuso and other such extraditions, this may destroy
Edited on Wed Jul-09-08 03:42 PM by Peace Patriot
any possibility that the truth about Uribe/Bush's behavior--and their egregiously cynical (and, indeed, murderous) maneuvering around the hostage situation, over this past year--will ever be revealed. There are caverns and dungeons of godawful horror holding secrets about Uribe and the Bush Cartel in Colombia. Dreadful tortures and murders (chainsawing union leaders and throwing their body parts into mass graves, slitting children's throats on suspicion of their parents being leftists), thousands of innocents killed, a culture of fascist death threats against human rights workers and journalists, major cocaine and weapons trafficking, gross misuse of $5.5 BILLION in U.S. military aid, assassination plots (and war plans) against neighboring leftist leaders, and on and on. Bush and Uribe are two of a kind--the nasty, conscienceless tools of powerful global corporate predator interests. Fifty Uribe cohorts, including family members, are under investigation in Colombia, by courageous prosecutors and judges, for death squad, drug trafficking and election fraud activity. Some have been convicted and are in jail. Uribe himself is under investigation for participating in a death squad meeting--and, recently, for having bribed legislators to extend his term of office. This, and the Mancuso and other extraditions, are not really extraditions from Colombia to the U.S. They are PERSONAL extraditions, from Uribe to Bush, or, rather, from Uribe's mafia operation to Bush's mafia operation. Justice? Ha! There is no justice in this. It is Uribe saying to Bush, 'Take care of my problem for me.'

Obviously, these FARC rebels know some things--just like Mancuso does. They will likely be tortured, subdued, silenced, and maybe 'disappeared' in U.S./Bush custody, more than likely in Guantanamo Bay, but it could just as well be done in the U.S. federal prison system, or U.S. military prisons. I fear for the lives of all of these extradited prisoners. Here, they have no support system; if they are granted attorneys, they will be attorneys who are not as familiar with the culture and language of the prisoners. But under the new lawless rule of George Bush, they can simply vanish, and we would have no right to know how or why.

The purposes of international fascist "anti-terror" projects, fostered by the Bushites and their global corporate predator sponsors, are made clearer by these extraditions of potential whistleblowers from Colombia to the U.S. Disorientation of the prisoner is one effect. Removal of the prisoner from a familiar venue. Denial of whatever rights and support networks he may have at home. Protection rackets are in play--in this case, Bush protecting Uribe--and protecting his own criminal networks, using his executive fiat acts, such as designating anyone he chooses as an "enemy combatant." Bush/Cheney political control of the Dept. of Justice, the FBI, etc. They have many Bushbot plants doing their bidding--after eight years to purge or intimidate anyone who felt loyal to the rule of law. And ain't it ironic that the U.S.A. is now the country where it is easiest to bully, intimidate, torture and kill any potential whistleblowers, and anyone who inconveniences Bush or their pals anywhere in the world.

I had not perceived the hostage saga as a Bush Cartel cleanup operation. But this extradition makes me wonder. I think I understand how they tried to set Hugo Chavez up for a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages--and, when that didn't work, had to stop his negotiations with the FARC (which the treacherous Uribe had requested him to undertake, and which had achieved the release of six hostages, without conditions) by blowing away the FARC hostage negotiator and 24 other people, in their sleep--with ten U.S. "smart bombs--on the eve of FARC's release of Betancourt (March 1 of this year). Then they set up this rescue stunt, with a $20 million ransom (if that proves true--and, since the prelim to it was a phony accusation that Chavez had given FARC money, I presume that that accusation was prelim cover for this actual payment--a typical Bushite media ploy)--all this so that Uribe gets the credit. (Notice how the conservative president of France, Sarkovy, yesterday praised Chavez for his help. I was glad to see Sarkovy not toe the Bushite line. They fucked him over, a couple of times, too.)

But I hadn't thought of the crap that Bush needs to cover up in Colombia, before he leaves office. Cocaine trafficking and assassination plots, at minimum. FARC members could have knowledge of that and more. Also, apparently, Uribe doesn't have as much control of the justice system in Colombia, as Bush does here. Colombian prosecutors and judges are after Uribe's ass. Mancuso was one of their star witnesses! (--now 'disappeared' into the Bushite DoJ). These FARC members could at least expose the $20 million ransom and the farce of the Betancourt "rescue." But in the U.S. they can be deemed "terrorists" by Bush and silenced.

I'm thinking that the hostage saga has an aspect to it that we don't fully understand yet. In Miami, we have this ridiculous prosecution of two Venezuelans and a Uruguayan (the notorious "suitcase full of money" saga, out of Miami) for "failing to register with the Attorney General as agents of a foreign government." According to the Bushbot prosecutor in Miami, the money ($800,000) was intended from Hugo Chavez to Cristina Fernandez (who was running for president of Argentina at the time--she won, without out the money). But if that is the case--that that was the origin and destination of the money--what does that have to do with the U.S.? Nothing! It is an internal matter, between the two countries. (And as I recall, Venezuela has a law against foreign money in its election campaigns, but Argentina does not. So this may not even have been a crime!) If Venezuelans and/or Argentinians want to do something about this incident (if it's even real--which I seriously doubt), that is THEIR BUSINESS. The U.S. has nothing to say about it! No jurisdiction. No right. But this asshole in Miami is INVENTING a jurisdiction. He claims that the three non-U.S. citizens he is prosecuting TALKED TO a fourth person, in Miami--a dual U.S./Venezuelan citizen who got caught with the money at the border, flying into Argentina--and pressured him not to implicate Chavez. How is that the business of a U.S. attorney? How is that a crime? People talking to people, about a political matter in a foreign country (clandestine or otherwise). (They weren't talking about blowing things up--like a Cubana airliner or anything. They were talking about a political matter!)

What I'm getting at is that I think the entire "suitcase full of money" caper is entirely made up--conceived, executed, and botched by the Miami mafia, on behalf of the Bush Junta, and "rescued" by the U.S. attorney (or they planned something like that all along), who is making headlines out of it, slandering Chavez and Fernandez (leftist leaders of their countries). This was one of the first alerts that the Bush Junta was using the U.S. justice system for political purposes outside of the country. They also intervened in the Chiquita death squad case, and got Chiquita execs off the hook for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to rightwing paramilitaries in Colombia to take care of their "labor problem (a case in U.S. courts). I'm sure there are many other instances of Bushite interference with the U.S. justice system, on matters affecting other countries. But the Miami "suitcase" caper was so absurd that it stuck out. An entirely invented incident--more than likely. An entirely invented U.S. jurisdiction over it. The Miami Herald gets more leftist-bashing copy.

Of course the Bushites are pouring billions of our tax dollars into rightwing political groups in South America--to buy elections, to invent elections (the "recall" in Venezuela), to push corporate interests, to stage 'brownshirt' riots, to destabilize countries, to lie, to subvert. They have a lot of nerve accusing Chavez of political interference in other countries. But, of course, that is WHY they are doing so--as cover for their own massive interference and profligate spending on OUR money to help fascist causes (possibly the worst one of which is their support of white racists in Bolivia).

The FARC extradition (and the Mancuso extradition) fit this pattern. So perhaps they will be "show trials" to coincide with re-introduction of the Colombia/U.S. "free trade" bill, or with Rumsfeld war plans against Venezuela and Ecuador. That is one other possibility--the fascist/corporate media game. But, especially with Mancuso, it is more likely the removal of whistleblowers from Colombia, and silencing them here.
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