Catholic priest who ran right-wing death squad arrested in Colombia

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Catholic priest who ran right-wing death squad arrested in Colombia

Associated Press in Bogotá
theguardian.com, Saturday 1 February 2014 03.15 GM

Colombian officials have announced the capture of a fugitive Catholic priest who was convicted in absentia last year of organising a killer far-right militia made up of members of a dismantled paramilitary bloc.

For nearly a decade from 2003, the Rev Oscar Albeiro Ortiz formed and ran an organisation engaged in murder, extortion and forced displacement, according to his sentencing document.

From his pulpit in San Antonio de Prado, a village near Medellín, Ortiz had accompanied members of the paramilitary bloc, then recruited them after the bloc was ostensibly disbanded under a peace pact brokered by the government of then-president Alvaro Uribe.

Critics of that "peace process" point to cases such as that of Ortiz as evidence that it was a sham.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/01/priest-right-wing-death-squad-colombia-arrested

[Demeter]

1. That is so disgusting!

A priest? What kind of priest is that? And especially in Latin America, home of liberation theology.

[bemildred]

2. And Jesus wept. nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. Horrendous criminality. His sentence should be doubled,

Last edited Wed Feb 5, 2014, 07:37 PM - Edit history (1)

due to the fact he betrayed the faith of his church members so wildly, so brutally.

From the O.P.:

His sentence, a copy of which the Associated Press obtained, says investigators using wiretaps had overheard Ortiz fingering as leftist rebels people who later turned up murdered.

The sentence said that people beaten or driven from their homes by paramilitary henchmen of Ortiz were told they were being punished "for disobeying the orders of the priest".

One witness quoted in the sentence described Ortiz "as a person of two faces: the good angel and the bad angel" and described seeing him late at night drinking with death squad members.

When Ortiz announced to his faithful at church one Sunday that some people would be coming to protect them, the witness said, he was referring to the arrival of paramilitaries who formerly belonged to the Cacique Nutibara bloc, which had killed hundreds of people.

The so-called paramilitaries, organised under the umbrella of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC, committed more than 70% of the killings in the country's nearly half-century-old dirty war, according to prosecutors.

Thank you, Eugene.

Without your post, would never have known about this.

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Rev Oscar Albeiro Ortiz[/center]