Human Rights Atrocities Still go Unpunished in Colombia
By Roxanna Altholz, UC Berkeley School of Law. Posted January 28, 2008.
An army general who participated in one of the country's worst massacres in recent history goes free.
The recent acquittal by a Bogotá court of General Jaime Humberto Uscátegui, the highest ranking military official ever prosecuted for human rights violations, shows that Colombia's justice system continues to let the worst perpetrators go free.
Mired in a 50-year civil war and plagued by drug trafficking, Colombia boasts some of the world's most ruthless criminals. Many of them are what one would expect: drug runners, paramilitary thugs, guerilla warlords. But many others appear to be model citizens -- senators, generals, judges -- who, by turning a blind eye, lifting a checkpoint, or providing a list of names, facilitate unspeakable atrocities. General Uscategui is such a man. In 1997, over 50 residents of Mapiripán, a small village in southern Colombia, were tortured for days, hacked to death and thrown into a nearby river. Uscategui could have stopped the massacre -- but chose not to.
I represented the families of victims of the Mapiripán massacre before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found extensive evidence of General Uscátegui's complicity. The paramilitaries reached the massacre site via an airport under Uscátegui's command. The General's troops helped the paramilitaries pass through several security checkpoints on the road to Mapiripán.
General Uscategui knew about the massacre even as it took place. One of his subordinates, Major Hernán Orozco, informed General Uscátegui that paramilitaries had entered the village and had begun to detain and torture its residents. Uscátegui ignored the warning and allowed the massacre to continue for five more days.
He then attempted to cover up his role. He ordered Orozco to falsify the documents showing he had received word of the massacre.
The Bogotá court gave Orozco, the whistleblower, a 40-year sentence. The general threatened to reveal everything he knew about the collaboration between military and paramilitary forces and walked free.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/75239/Article from BBC Mundo, after being sent through the google translation tool:
Hallan graves of victims of paramilitary
The Colombian authorities claim to have found the graves where lie the remains of 57 people killed by right-wing paramilitaries, in the department of Meta.
The location of graves in Mapiripán (300 kilometres east of Bogota), was revealed by a former paramilitary commander.
Manuel de Jesus Piraban, alias "El Pirata," said the site on the map, as part of an agreement on the disarmament process between the government and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia.
It is believed that most of the bodies belonged to civilians from the towns of San Andres and La Cooperativa killed in the past 10 years, apparently at the hands of the "Heroes of Meta and Guaviare."
Five of the remains belong to children, and the skeleton of an adult male hands him faults, as reported by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
Search does not stop
The authorities in Bogota seeking the bodies of over 10,000 persons believed were murdered by paramilitaries in the past 20 years.
So far only 500 have been found.
Around 31,000 paramilitaries have laid down their weapons between 2003 and 2006 as part of a disarmament process driven by the government.
These talks are aimed at ending its illegal war against leftist guerrillas, launched in the 1980's.
Note BBCMundo.com:
Http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_6599000/6599879.stm
Published: 2007/04/27 14:46:11 GMT
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