Santos asks for international supervision in murder trial of Uribe’s brother

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Colombia Reports

Santos asks for international supervision in murder trial of Uribe’s brother
Posted by Adriaan Alsema on Mar 1, 2016

Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos asked the international community on Monday to oversee the murder trial against the arrested brother of former President Alvaro Uribe.

In two tweets, Santos asked both the Inspector General’s Office and the international community to make sure the former president’s brother can count on “all the constitutional and legal guarantees” while Santiago Uribe stands trial for allegedly founding “The 12 Apostles” paramilitary group in the 1990s.

. . .

Uribe’s younger brother is the second in the Uribe family to be arrested on charges he had ties to paramilitary death squads.

In 2011, Uribe’s cousin Mario, a former Senator, was sentenced to seven years in prison for having used paramilitary intimidation and money to get elected into the Senate in 2002.


Read more: http://colombiareports.com/santos-asks-for-international-oversight-in-uribe-trial/

[Judi Lynn]

1. New book adds to claims Uribe’s brother led paramilitary group

New book adds to claims Uribe’s brother led paramilitary group
Posted by Edward Fox on May 8, 2011

A new book sheds further light on the alleged leading role of former President Alvaro Uribe’s brother Santiago in the notorious paramilitary death squad, the 12 Apostles. The book, written by Colombian journalist Olga Behar and presented Saturday in Bogota, is titled “El Clan de los 12 Apostoles,” (The Clan of the 12 Apostles) and focuses on the period of 1992-1994, drawing predominantly from interviews with a former Antioquian police official, Juan Carlos Meneses, the man who first implicated Uribe as the leader of the group in an interview with the Washington Post last year.

While the 2010 interview by Meneses was crucial in highlighting Uribe’s role as the principal financier and strategist for the group, the book delves deeper into the relationship between the paramilitaries and the authorities, a relationship that permitted the killings of peasants, guerrillas and alleged guerrilla sympathizers by the group Behar stated in a recent interview. Rather than seeing the operational capacity of this paramilitary squad as being a result of individual failings by the police and armed forces, Behar notes that it was down to a deliberate failing by the authorities, using cases provided by Meneses as key examples.

Meneses relayed to Behar how Uribe would often order the police to retreat from their area of operation by some one or two miles in order for a massacre conducted by his gang to take place. When reports would come through to the police, they would be too far away to arrive at the scene in time to detain the perpetrators. For these services, Uribe allegedly paid Meneses personally $2,000 per month.

One incident in particular that highlights this framework perfectly is where Uribe allegedly told Meneses that there was a target of the 12 Apostles arriving into town on a bus. Uribe needed Meneses to clear his men from the bus station to ensure that the paramilitaries could assassinate the man in question.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/new-book-adds-to-claims-against-uribes-brother-that-he-led-paramilitary-group/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Colombia: Former president’s brother held over death squad links

Colombia: Former president’s brother held over death squad links
Mar Wednesday 2nd 2016
posted by James Tweedie

. . .

Mr Meneses recalled last year that when he took up his post in 1994 there was already a group engaged in “social cleansing” with the support of state and national authorities. He said that the 12 Apostles not only targeted suspected Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerillas and sympathisers but also common criminals and drug addicts.

. . .

Alvaro Uribe’s 2002-2010 presidency was marked by paramilitary massacres of peasants and assassinations of trade unionists and rights campaigners, carried out in a climate of impunity.

His reign of terror was funded by Washington via its Plan Colombia, which saw Bogota receive more US military aid than the rest of Latin America combined, in the name of combating the drug trade.

Hasan Dodwell, spokesman for British-based campaign Justice for Colombia, said the arrest “shines the spotlight once again on the relationship between Uribe and the Colombian paramilitaries. “His closest political allies, his cousin and now his brother have all been arrested for their paramilitary ties,” he added.

More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-b64a-Colombia-Former-presidents-brother-held-over-death-squad-links#.VtYwNuT2aYE