Colombian authorities ordered to apologize for massacre .

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Colombia Reports

Colombian authorities ordered to apologize for massacre .
Monday, 30 April 2012 10:24
Rosemary Westwood

A court on Monday ordered Colombia's security forces to apologize for failing to apologize for failing to stop the execution-style slaughter of fisherman in the northeastern department of Magdalena in 2000.

The Administrative Tribunal of Magdalena's Office ordered an official apology from the department for the Nueva Venecia Massacre, when 60 right-wing paramilitaries systematically shot dead 39 fishermen in the town of Nueva Venecia, and killed others in Buenavista and Bocas de Aracataca, for allegedly having ties to left-wing guerrillas, newspaper El Espectador reported.

The court criticized the army for not entering the towns until December 24, four days after the murders began, the newspaper reported.
Former paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias "Jorge 40," was sentenced to 47 years in prison for the massacre, according daily El Tiempo. Jorge 40 never did time for the massacre as he was extradited in 2008 to face drug charges in the U.S.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/23778-officials-must-apologise-for-nueva-vencia-massacre.html

[midnight]

1. Very sad.... I wonder why these men, trying to feed their families, we ordered to be killed?

[Blue Hen Buckeye]

2. We ?

Are you suggesting the U.S. somehow made the paramilitaries do it. Or perhaps you meant were instead of we.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. We were supplying the Colombian state with about a billion dollars a year then.

The Colombian military was working hand in hand with the paramilitaries.

It was supposed to be a war on drugs, but we were helping the Colombian state fight the FARC, a leftist insurgency. Our counter-narcotics war formally slipped into counterinsurgency after 9/11.

I don't know if Midnight committed a typo or not, but yes, "we" have some responsibility.