Colombian Ex-Official’s Brother Arrested for Slayings
BOGOTA – The brother of former Inspector General Edgardo Maya was arrested in connection with the killings nine years ago of two union officials in northern Colombia, the Attorney General’s Office said.
Jaime Blanco Maya was detained in Valledupar, capital of the northern province of Cesar, and is suspected of arranging the murders of Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya, president and vice president, respectively, of the union at a coal mine owned by U.S.-based Drummond.
The killings were carried out by members of the now-defunct AUC federation of right-wing militias, which disbanded in 2006 as part of a peace process with the government.
Locarno and Orcasita were riding in a Drummond bus with some 40 other workers on March 12, 2001, when the vehicle was intercepted by a group of armed men near the town of Bosconia.
The paramilitaries pulled Locarno and Orcasita off the bus, executing the former on the spot. The tortured body of the other union official turned up a few days later.
The man who succeeded Locarno as president of the union, Gustavo Soler, was murdered seven months after taking office.
Blanco Maya, a Drummond contractor at the time of the killings, could be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and aggravated homicide, the AG’s office said.
Former militia commander Oscar Jose Ospino was sentenced in March to 30 years in prison for the murders of the unionists.
But a U.S. civil suit against Alabama-based Drummond, accused of giving financial and other support to the militias, for the killings of Locarno, Orcasita and Soler, ended in July 2007 in an acquittal.
Separately, the former dean of the University of Cordoba was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 35 years in prison Monday for colluding with paramilitaries in the September 2000 murder of Professor Hugo Ignacio Iguaran.
Convicted along with the fugitive Victor Hugo Hernandez was militiaman Victor Alfonso Rojas, who is in custody.
Iguaran was killed at Hernandez’s home in Monteria, capital of Cordoba province and seat of the university.
The AUC militia federation effectively controlled the university and the provincial government, former paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso testified in November 2008.
He also acknowledged the AUC’s role in killing Iguaran, who was Hernandez’s rival in the election for dean. http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=365515&CategoryId=12393-----
According Uno, Perez said that Jaime Blanco Maya, arrested in early September on suspicion of ordering the 2001 murders of two Drummond unionists, had links to the CIA and to the U.S. Embassy in Colombia. Blanco Maya's alleged dealings with Perez's client, paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias "Jorge 40," are also being investigated. --from the OP
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Perez is the legal counsel for top paramilitary leaders such as Salvatore Mancuso and "Jorge 40," and accompanies them to legal proceedings in both Colombia and the United States. "Jorge 40" has been extradited to the U.S. but his case has been removed from the public record, which likely signifies that he is cooperating with authorities. --from the OP
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We need a chart, don't we?, tracing the provenance of these (and the other) terrible murders in Colombia, with possible connections to the CIA, the U.S. military and its 'contractors' in Colombia, the U.S. embassy (William Brownfield) and members of the Bush Junta. We need an easy chart or table of who's said what, who did what, who fingered whom, and who has been extradited to the U.S. to get them out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors.
I don't believe the conclusion of this sentence in the OP: "'Jorge 40' has been extradited to the U.S. but his case has been removed from the public record,
which likely signifies that he is cooperating with authorities."
I suspect that just the opposite is true--that the complete sealings of that case and others in Federal District court in DC is part of a coverup of Bush Junta-connected crimes in Colombia. And I don't mean just Chiquita (connected to our current AG Eric Holder) and Drummond. The "pacification" program for the La Macarena region, for instance--where a grave containing 500 to 2,000 unidentified bodies was discovered--was designed by the Pentagon and the USAID, and was implemented by a UK-military trained Colombian commander. It has many resemblances to the U.S. "pacification" program in Afghanistan. Also, Blackwater was just "fined" by the U.S. State Department for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" (not sure if Colombians) for use in Iran and Afghanistan. I think that that may be a coverup in the guise of an expose (coverup of Bush Junta authorization of the murders of Colombians for "training" assassins).
Then there is this very secretly negotiated U.S./Colombian military agreement that William Brownfield was so anxious to get a signature on, before he left town--an agreement signed by Alvaro Uribe, granting total diplomatic immunity to all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia. I want to know WHY this was SECRETLY negotiated. Surely, Brownfield and Uribe knew that this agreement was unconstitutional. The agreement was recently declared unconstitutional by the Colombian supreme court, because the constitution requires that any such agreement be discussed and voted on by the legislature. They did this secret negotiation and signing last year. Were they counting on a Uribe coup to stay in office? CIA Director Leon Panetta (a member of Daddy Bush's Iraq Study Group) visited Bogota this year amidst rumors of a possible Uribe coup. Apparently he nixed it. Now we find Uribe being honored by the Obama administration and by the Jesuits at Georgetown. Were CIA protection and "honors" his price for silence? (He surely knows plenty about Junior and pals.)
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