Remains of paramilitary leader Fidel Castaņo exhumed in northwest Colombia
Remains of paramilitary leader Fidel Castaño exhumed in northwest Colombia
posted by Adriaan Alsema
Sep 30, 2013
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“The corpse has been identified,” said Hinestroza, adding that following an examination of dental records his investigators are 90% certain the remains belong to Castaño, who disappeared in 1994, less than a decade after the senior criminal began organizing private paramilitary armies to protect his own drug business and local ranchers from attacks by leftist rebel groups like the FARC and ELN.
Castaño, whose brothers were a long-time ally of slain drug lord Pablo Escobar, formed the Pepes, a paramilitary group that carried out bloody attacks against Escobar’s drug empire in the early 1990s. The militia allegedly collaborated with Colombian police and the DEA to locate and kill Escobar.
Following his death, Castaño’s brothers Carlos and Fidel went on to found the ACCU, a paramilitary organization active in the northwest of Colombia that was later converted to the AUC.
The AUC, with the help of local military and police commanders and the financial support of local businesses, began a bloody offensive against the FARC in the mid-1990s that consolidated the group’s control over cocaine exports to the United States and Europe.
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Demobilized members of the AUC confessed to tens of thousands of human rights violations including murder, rape, forced disappearances and forced displacement.
http://colombiareports.co/authorities-capture-uribes-former-security-chief-linked-drug-traffickers/